Anyone Else
by RoxisAngel
Summary: When Dimitri is slated as a potential candidate to be Rosemarie Hathaway's guardian, he thinks at first that she'll be like any other person. But what if she's not? And can Dimitri ever dissuade his best friend's crush?
1. Chapter 1

_Whoo! I get to try and attract readers by having all of the Moroi!Rose falling in love with Student!Dimitri (and visa versa) junk, yet I still get to pull in a one sided Ivan/Dimitri! (Are there only _two_ people who think there were massive amounts of drama between them? _Really?_)_

* * *

The light was fading fast, but the early September breeze stayed warm and light, carrying no hint of the autumn or winter that was fast approaching. As he walked through St. Vladimir's upper campus, Dimitri decided that he liked Montana – at least for now. No doubt the change in seasons – and school – would change that opinion. The language barrier (which was growing smaller with every passing day he spent in America) and the teachers would make a huge difference, though.

Next to Dimitri, his friend, Ivan Zeklos, was examining the campus... and the hot girls, of course. Even if Ivan preferred males for possible romantic encounters, checking out girls openly was more accepted, and he didn't discriminate with who he flirted with. That was actually how Dimitri and Ivan had met, when they'd both been at one of St. Basil's "orientations" for the soon-to-be seniors who were going to go abroad the next year. Ivan had been disappointed when Dimitri had turned him down, but Dimitri had apparently done it in the nicest way possible, so Ivan still wanted to be friends. Dimitri had agreed, mostly because then he wouldn't make a possible enemy out of the only familiar face at St. Vladimir's.

"Where are my dorms?" Ivan asked, finally realizing that he was surrounded by dhampirs.

"It's over there," Dimitri said, pointing toward where most of the Moroi were conjugating. "The one on the left, think." Unlike the dhampirs, who had only one dorm that separated the sexes by floors and stern hall matrons, the Moroi had two, one dorm for each gender. The gap grated on Dimitri's nerves. Maybe the administration would bitch less about not having enough dhampirs if they had more room for them.

Not wanting to tread on the wet grass and get mud on his pants (again), Ivan stayed with Dimitri until they came to a footpath that eventually made its way to the Moroi dorms.

"See you later." Ivan brushed his hand against Dimitri's arm and then turned away.

"Bye." When Ivan was gone, Dimitri sighed. The flirting and the touching had gone down a lot, but he knew that Ivan still had a crush on him. The boys should probably talk about that one day, but Ivan seemed to respect Dimitri's sexual orientation and wasn't obviously pining away, so why make waves and start an argument over something so small? Ivan seemed to naturally be a touchy-feely person, but it was hard to tell when he hit on almost every person he saw.

Dimitri picked up his class schedule and room keys at his dorm's front desk, and made his way up to his room. He didn't have a roommate, so the second bed seemed disconcerting.

Most of his things had been spirited up here, and the few t-shirts and books he had forgotten to pack had made their way into the backpack he wore. Using a pen, Dimitri started cutting the packaging tape that sealed the cardboard boxes and unpacking his things. His books went onto the small bookshelf that sat against the wall, between the two beds, the quilt Olena had packed for him replaced the ugly dorm-issued one.

A knock on the door interrupted him. It was a small student aide, and she had a yellow slip of paper for him. "You're supposed to go to Headmistress Kirova's office as soon as possible," she said before disappearing down the hall.

Dimitri stepped outside, folding the paper and putting it into his pocket as he locked the dorm room. Then he set off, trying to recall his mental map of the school. Luckily, there was one near the front desk for fire-escape purposes, so he studied it briefly and moved on. The fact that he hadn't done anything wrong helped abate his nerves some. He had the grades, good behavior, and had already paid for the study abroad program, and had jumped through all the right hoops and filled out the right forms to get here.

A staff member waved him to Kirova's office once he found the right building, and Dimitri entered to find not only Kirova at her desk, but also a bearded Moroi wearing flashy clothing and jewelry standing in the middle of the room. His two guardians were also standing, one against the far wall and one closer to the door. They were probably here out of habit than need – St. Vladimir, like all schools, was ringed with wards that were renewed regularly.

"You wanted to see me, Headmistress?" Dimitri asked Kirova.

"Sit down," she said, nodding to one of the chairs in front of her desk. "Abe Mazur," she began, nodding to the Moroi, "is scouting out possible guardians for Rosemarie Hathaway. He thinks you're a worthy candidate so far, despite not having any real-world experience, of course. But if you make it, you'll be paired up with an older guardian to protect her."

Dimitri mused over that, trying not to let his ego inflate too much. The Hathaway family, though not nearly as small as the Dragomir one, had been targeted by Strigoi more and more lately, probably because the last Dragomir was safely in school. They'd never been a huge clan like the Ivashkovs, and if you added in several house fires and a long history of liver failure via drinking, the family diminished even more. Currently, there were about fifty Hathaways, but most of them were older, and those who could have children would have to be picky about who they had those children with or risk either losing the bloodline or inbreeding. Luckily, there were more than enough potential marriages, so they were fine in that respect.

There had been some doubt that Rosemarie had the bloodline to be considered a true Hathaway because Janine refused to name the father of her child, but a few years ago the father's grandparents had finally been located in Turkey. Their bloodline had been examined, and it was found that every descendant had enough Hathaway blood (well, except for one, but she had died as a small child). Rosemarie hadn't been cut out of the family, and sighs of relief were breathed. She was the only female able to bear children – one cousin was infertile, another had a husband that was infertile (because she married for love instead of money, it was always said, she couldn't have children), while a third was mentally unstable and locked away in an institution. There were male cousins, of course, but it didn't stop people from putting Rosemarie up on a pedestal.

"I don't know what to say," Dimitri said. "Thanks, I guess." He looked uncertainly at Mazur. The man smiled, flashing white teeth.

"Brilliant, Ellen," he said, turning his smile on Kirova. "Thank you."

Mazur had an accent Dimitri couldn't quite place, and he made a mental note to search around on the Internet to try to find a site that clips of different accents. Of course, the region the person came from would also make an impact... Dimitri let the idea go.

He tuned back into the conversation, listening quietly as Mazur checked on Rosemarie's status at the school. Her transcript had finally been mailed over (Dimitri got the sense that whatever school Rosemarie had gone to had a chronic organization problem, and it hadn't changed with the new Head), so they were making a few edits to her schedule, transferring her over from PreCal sixth period to Calculus seventh period and adding in a web-design class to fill the space that PreCal had left.

Dimitri touched the schedule in his pocket, noting that he too had Calculus seventh period. It'd be a good idea to see her face-to-face. He wondered about her personality. Not all royals were snobs, of course, but a good proportion of them were. So many people following the Hathaway family drama might give Rosemarie a complex.

"You can go now," Kirova said, waving Dimitri away.

"Thank you for coming by," Mazur added, giving him another smile.

Dimitri got up and left, tossing the yellow slip into the recycling bin as he did so.

By now, the lights were on around campus, and the sun was down. Dimitri went to his dorm and finished unpacking, discarding the cardboard boxes at the end of the hall along with the rest of his floor. Then he headed toward the cafeteria for breakfast.

Ivan was in line, squinting at a small container of something pink. His lips were red, indicating that he had just come from the feeders. "What is this?" he asked Dimitri, showing him the container. "Does it say?"

Dimitri scanned the label, doing some quick translating back and forth in his head. "It's something strawberry," he finally said. "Just eat it." It looked like yogurt, but he couldn't actually find the word on the label and didn't want to get it wrong. Not many cultural differences had been taught in his English class, so eating or watching TV was sometimes a terrifying experience. His mouth filled with the flavor of Mountain Dew and he winced at the memory.

Ivan did take it, and also got a drink from a vending machine.

Dimitri kept it simple, grabbing a muffin and some pancakes, and sat next to Ivan, who already was chatting up a girl. Her long hair was platinum blonde, and she had the typical Moroi body type – super slim and tall, with not much of a chest but good-looking everything else.

She smiled kindly when Dimitri sat down. "I'm Lissa," she said, reaching out for a handshake. Dimitri shook it.

"She's the last Dragomir," Ivan said, smiling widely. The news overjoyed him, and Dimitri picked up the mostly-empty can of soda, sniffing it and scanning the label. It was an energy drink, not a soda, and caffeine-sensitive people – like Ivan – weren't supposed to drink it. Sighing, Dimitri put the can down.

"You're having a muffin next time," he said.

"Why?" Ivan, Dimitri noticed, was already trembling.

Lissa picked up the can and read, "'Not for caffeine-sensitive persons.' This is you to a T, isn't it?"

"Do you have a roommate?" Dimitri asked. "Someone who will find your body if you have a heart attack? Otherwise, you're going to have to stay out here in public."

Ivan actually giggled, and then stopped abruptly, covering his mouth with a hand. "This is bad," he said. "This is really bad. I'm going to go sit in the nurses' office." He got up, taking Dimitri's muffin with him.

"So, you guys are exchange students?" Lissa asked once Ivan was gone. Dimitri nodded, ready for the follow-up question. "How do you like it so far?"

Dimitri shrugged. "It's strange, but I like it. My English teacher only taught us the language, though, so the cultural differences are weird. And then, there are always labels to mess you up." He looked at the can sitting between them.

"Does that happen often?" Lissa asked, with a little head-nod in the direction that Ivan had skipped off to.

"A few times," Dimitri said. "But Ivan knows that he freaks out with caffeine in his system, so he's pretty good about avoiding those kinds of drinks."

"Have you been friends for a while?"

"Just the summer," Dimitri replied, shrugging. "We met at the end of the school year."

"What me to show you around campus?" Lissa asked. "There are a few teachers on my schedule who I've never had a class with, and if _I_ need the practice, you definitely do." She wasn't trying to flirt with him in any way – she was just being nice. He smiled, liking her motives.

"Sure." He finished the last bite of pancake, and then scooped up his plate and the trash Ivan left behind, dumping them in their respective bins – trash for the plate, yogurt container, plastic spoon and fork, recycling for the can. Then he followed her outside.

The crossed the quad and went over to the buildings that housed the classrooms. Lissa showed Dimitri the art, math, and English departments, and then they traced their afternoon schedules. The pair shared Calculus and English at the end of the day. Lissa showed him around the magic classrooms – she hadn't specialized yet, she told him, so she was getting put back into the basic freshman class... for the third time. Lissa didn't have many complaints, though, except that the freshman kept on getting more and more immature and stupid. Then they left that wing and went over to where Dimitri's guardian classes were – the ones that didn't take place in the gym, that is.

"When I was talking to Ivan, we shared our morning schedules, and we share two of the same morning classes," Lissa said as they went back out to the quad, "Moroi Politics and Russian Social Studies. So I can show him around then."

"Did _your_ teacher tell you about cultural differences?" Dimitri asked. It was a sore spot he couldn't help poking at. But she probably didn't remember – if she was in Russian Social Studies, then she took the Russian Immersion program, which taught you the language from day one of preschool. St. Basil's had that program for English, but Dimitri hadn't taken it. He learned to speak mostly from his family, who then had taught him how to write and spell during school breaks so he wouldn't fail his high school English classes because he didn't know how to write properly.

"Not really," Lissa said, wincing at her ignorance. "I mean, I know some of the foods you guys have, but... now it's kind of too late to learn." She made a face. "None of my Russian classes are about Russia – it's about other stuff, in a language I don't totally understand. And I fail at speaking it – never practiced after class or during the summer – so I can't go and ask the teacher."

After hanging out in the quad and griping about horrible teachers they'd each had the misfortune to meet, it started to sprinkle outside, so they decided to go to the library. Lissa prodded Dimitri a few more times for details about his home life and aspirations, making Dimitri admit his visit to Kirova. Lissa reacted with surprise and a little bit of awe, especially to the news that Rosemarie would be attending St. Vladimir's. She too mused over the girl's personality. They had met when they were little, of course, and their mothers had attended the same conference, but that had been over ten years ago.

Ivan found them at lunchtime. He was still jittery, but able to keep a mostly straight face. Some of Lissa's friends had joined the pair by then, so the table was buzz of activity and noise. Lissa continued talking, telling the boys who was who – which royals to avoid and why, who had gotten suspended last year, which girls probably had herpes from sleeping with so many people.

One of "those girls" was sitting at the table. Camille Conta laughed, but contested Lissa's assumption of her, saying, "I didn't sleep with _all_ of those guys, but I don't deny that I made out with every single one of them. It was fabulous, even if I was totally drunk."

Lissa laughed, "I'd call you a Slut with a Heart of Gold, but I haven't actually read about that trope yet and don't know if it's accurate."


	2. Chapter 2

_I was on vacation until today (when a tow truck brought my mom and I home, which was equal parts scary - the car breaking down - and awesome - getting to ride an a truck), but now I have a nice schedule set up - post a chapter every Sunday. _

* * *

Dimitri didn't get to see Rosemarie until Calculus on Wednesday, the day classes started.

So far, his day had gone well. In his guardian classes, it had mostly been an introduction to the course and review from prior years, with a little sparring at the end of the practical lessons. He'd met some nice people, and some other not-so-nice people. He'd had lunch with Ivan, Lissa, and her friends.

Some acquaintances of hers had stopped by for small talk, catching the group up on the latest gossip. There wasn't anything terribly exciting, but more than a few people were interested in the simple fact that Rosemarie Hathaway was going to their school. Of course, they were also interested in every other transfer student, including Dimitri and Ivan.

Dimitri managed to keep a low profile, something he'd learned to do in large groups. It never fooled his mother, who was equally attentive to all her children, but sometimes his siblings had managed to forget him, at least temporarily. He'd perfected the technique in school. Talk, but not too much or to little, and don't say anything particularly interesting. Pay attention to the conversation, but don't appear to latch on to every word. Conversely, don't look bored or mimic falling asleep. As the hype about the new kids went down, he could quiet, eventually merging into the background as "Ivan's friend" or even go unnoticed. By November, he could be invisible – or as invisible as a good-looking, 6'7" teenage boy could be.

His afternoon classes had also been mostly introduction and some review. He liked his AP Biology teacher – she was nice, smart, and very student-savvy. They ended up on an off-topic discussion about why Moroi men's bone structure stayed slim, their shoulders not often broadening during puberty, switching to how breasts were "meant to look like your ass," and when class ended, the woman was laughing and the idiocy one by had when he let it slip that he thought it was gross that "girls peed out of the same hole babies came out of." She held him back after class to talk to him, and when he came into Dimitri's Psychology class ten minutes late, the boy was white even for a Moroi.

Now, walking into seventh-period Calculus, Dimitri hesitated. A knot of people were surrounding the teacher's desk, indicating a seating chart, but Lissa and Ivan waved him over to their table to talk.

"How did your morning classes go?" Dimitri asked the Moroi.

Lissa shrugged, but Ivan said, "Our Politics teacher was too busy getting high to come to class, so we started a betting pool about how long it will be until he's fired. I put in $50 for two weeks. How were your classes?"

"Fine. I like the Biology teacher."

"I know! He's hot, isn't he?" Ivan said, excited.

The bell rang before Dimitri could tell Ivan they had different teachers, cutting their conversation short. He joined several students who were still looking for their names on the seating chart, finding his name easily and noting that Rosemarie sat in front of him. Not that it mattered, Dimitri told himself. He was only a potential candidate. She probably didn't even know about Mazur's visit to Kirova, just thought that someone would probably be getting her guardians fixed at the end of the school year, after the trials.

Dimitri had always liked sitting in the back of classrooms. There were always jerks in the corners, of course, but the guardians that stood in the back usually kept them quiet. Dimitri liked being able to examine his classmates, and nobody complained about not being able to see the board because of the tall person sitting in front of them.

He didn't discern much about Rosemarie during class, other than she worked quietly and preferred to be called Rose. She seemed funny and social, making up horrible math jokes ("I need to get a loan, but I need someone to _cosine!_") with another student while the class was doing their work. When Rose got up to turn in her work early, Dimitri noticed that she was curvy for a Moroi, and that she also knew how to dress herself well without showing off wealth or label-dropping. Add in wit (or nerdiness, depending on whom you asked and how much they liked math puns) and Disney princess features – a heart-shaped face, dark brown hair that reached her waist, and large, dark eyes – and Dimitri had to admit that she was very hot.

The review sheets they were doing seemed to touch every weak point Ivan had, judging by the cursing Dimitri heard coming from his friend's table. Lissa tried to explain some of the concepts to him, but she was having trouble with a few herself after a summer where the most math she'd had to do was simple addition. Lissa was also looking around at her classmates, trying to figure out who was gliding by on their own. At the end of class when the bell rang, she walked up to Rose's desk.

"Hi," she said, smiling. Rose smiled back, automatically. "I noticed that you got done with your work early, and was wondering if maybe you could help me and my friend after school or something?" Back at his desk, Ivan waved energetically.

Rose grimaced apologetically. "I left a good eighth of that blank," she warned, zipping up her bag. "Just 'cause I passed PreCal doesn't mean I'm a genius or that I remember everything."

"Well, go get it anyway," Lissa suggested. "Maybe we can all slog through it together." Rose nodded, and the girls set up a meeting time and place. Then Rose shouldered her bag and left, stopping by the turn-in basket and sorted through that until she found her packet. Then she was gone.

"That had nothing to do with... you know," Lissa murmured when they were leaving. "She seemed like the only person who finished without glaring at either the teacher or the paper."

"Why are we whispering?" Ivan asked, butting into the conversation with a conspiratorial hiss.

"I'll tell you after school," Dimitri said, pushing open the door to his and Lissa's English class.

* * *

"So, why were you whispering?" Ivan asked when he and Dimitri arrived at the library soon after eighth period. They grabbed a couch on the far side, away from the front desk and librarians. Dimitri had left Lissa chatting with some friends outside their English classroom, and they hadn't seen Rose since she'd made plans with Lissa. Dimitri knew she had a free period, and when Mazur had been rearranging her schedule, it'd seemed like she couldn't have one in the middle of the day because then she lost track of time and ended up being late or skipping entirely.

Dimitri swallowed, nervous. "Yesterday, I got called to Kirova's office," he said. "Some guy was there, scouting out potential guardians for her. I had _nothing_ to do with it, Ivan, but it wasn't really something I could just say 'no thanks' to." The last sentence was a defense. "He said I was just a possible candidate."

Ivan still grew quiet. "Oh."

"It probably won't work out," Dimitri said, partially to Ivan, but partially for himself. Guarding Rose was a long shot, and he didn't even know her. Was she pretty? Yes. Important? Not to him. "I don't have any real-world experience – I haven't even seen a Strigoi in real life. There's probably someone out there who's killed one over summer break or something."

"Okay," Ivan said, rolling his eyes. "I get it." He launched into a rant about his roommate, but his heart didn't seem to be into it.

As Ivan spoke, Dimitri's eyes slid past him, to the door. Rose was standing by the metal detectors, an almost wary expression on her face. Her hair, he noticed, which had been brushed neatly in Calculus, was messy. He tried not to wonder why. Maybe she'd taken a nap. Maybe she'd had sex. Either way, it wasn't his business.

As he was pondering, Lissa appeared behind Rose, tapping the girl on the shoulder. Rose turned, they exchanged words, and then they walked over to where Ivan and Dimitri were seated. Rose pulled a half-inch binder out of her backpack and opened it on her lap.

"My notes would be so good if I could read this shit," she said, flipping through the loose-leaf pages. There were notes, but also class work exercises and returned homework. Most everything had a name/date/period/assignment title on them, but a few just had problem after problem with no rhyme or reason. Lissa took one of those papers out and looked over it, unspoken question in her gaze.

"For a few weeks last year, my Flash and Photoshop computer broke down," Rose explained, looking self-conscious and a little ashamed. "So I started doing problems out of the book."

"Flash and Photoshop?" Ivan asked.

"I have a laptop, and it only has those two programs on it," Rose said. "I mess around with them in my free time – you know, making banners or icons or junk like that. Wallpapers are a bitch, though, because there are _no_ images big enough for computers with huge resolution."

Lissa's ears perked up. "Do you put anything online?" she asked. "I just started watching _Firefly_, and I think I need something to show for it, but whenever I search for anything, I get the same fifty icons coming up over and over again. It's so annoying."

Rose scrawled the link on a scrap of paper and passed it over to Lissa. "I also have some flash games on there that I did a while ago. They're complete crap," she warned.

Lissa nodded, tucking the piece of paper into her pocket. Then she took out her notebook and pulled out the Calculus packet. "So, did anyone get number five?"

Glad to be moving back to math, Dimitri searched through his packet. They shared answers for a while, trying to explain to Ivan how they'd gotten them, but nobody had much luck with that. Then some other Calculus students wandered over, and eventually the group grew, expanding across all three couches. Those who didn't fit stretched out on the floor.

About an hour after classes had ended, a Moroi girl with black hair came up to them. She was pretty, despite the claw-like scars on her face and her clothes, which turned her into a walking advertisement. Dimitri didn't notice her at first, though – he noticed the wary expressions that appeared on several students' faces. One kid actually picked his things up and moved away from the group, sitting down at a small both several yards away and watching the group from there.

Lissa greeted the girl with her usual cheeriness. "Hey, Tasha," she said. "What's up?"

Dimitri suddenly understood his peers' wariness. Natasha Ozera had been one of the royals Lissa had warned him about yesterday. Ever since her parents had willingly turned into Strigoi, her whole family had been shunned. While her twin brother had just become antisocial and gave everyone the impression that he was a bit of a psychopath, she had began to fight with people – first with pinches and hair pulling, but as she grew older, the violence escalated. The fact that she'd specialized in fire magic really didn't help. She'd been in and out of therapy and rehab since middle school.

In a way, Dimitri understood why she did it. She hated her position as a disgraced royal, and wanted someone to fight, wanted to turn the mental anguish into physical action. Since there wasn't one person at fault, though, she lashed out at whoever she could. Not for the first time, Dimitri thanked God that only his father had abused Olena. Beating the man up had actually solved a lot of Dimitri's behavioral problems at school, but most of the teachers believed that the change had to do with the threat of getting kicked out and/or sent prison if he ever hurt someone like that again.

"Nothing," Tasha said, her eyes scanning over Dimitri and Ivan, and then flicking to Rose almost like an afterthought. "I'm just checking out the new kids." As her eyes returned to him, Dimitri noticed that her pupils were oddly dilated and wondered if she was high on something. She nudged his foot with hers. "You're going to be a guardian, right?" she asked.

"There's kind of a line," Ivan said. Tasha turned to him, her face contorting with anger, and he shrunk back against the cushions. "There just is," he said quickly. "It's not my fault."

"Even if I've never heard one, I think there might be a moral to the 'don't shoot the messenger' story," Rose noted with a gentle voice, drawing her knees up to her chest. When Tasha turned to her, she averted her gaze.

"You're a bitch," Tasha spat. Behind her, Dimitri noticed an elderly librarian getting up from her desk with a worried expression on her face. "That's all I've ever heard about you. You're a _bitch_."

"I know," Rose said quietly, still keeping her eyes averted. The expression on her face, her body language – everything screamed out "vulnerable."

That seemed to stop Tasha for a moment. She stood there, swaying for a moment. Clearly, she'd been expecting a fight.

The librarian came up behind her and spoke, asking, "Is everything okay here?"

Tasha wheeled around, a little unsteady on her feet. "We're fine. Fucking _fine_," she said bitterly, sarcasm drawing out the words. "Now let me through," Tasha said, as if she couldn't walk over the few pieces of scattered paper on her left to get to the door. The librarian did so, moving back to her desk, yet keeping an eye on Tasha the whole time. When Tasha made it past the metal detectors, reaching for the door, she picked up the phone.

"'Bitch' is one of those curse words, isn't it?" Ivan asked.

"Back in the nineties, yeah," Rose said, relaxing. Her face once more showed faint disinterest, and she put her feet back on the floor. "Now 'fuck' is the bad word, but it's kind of losing its edge now, what with all of the sixth graders wanting to be cool. I guess it all depends on where you live, though."

Lissa touched Rose's arm. "Are you okay?" she asked, unable to make sense in Rose's sudden change of demeanor. "What was that back there? I've never heard any stories about you..."

"Me neither," Rose said, "But then again, I usually don't pay attention to much gossip. I just heard somewhere that if you play along to whatever the crazies are saying, then they eventually leave you alone. What do you think that chick was on, anyway?"

"Maybe a prescription drug?" someone stretched out on the floor suggested. "She didn't look like she was drunk, and weed doesn't usually piss you off. Plus, you can kind of smell those things, you know?"

Dimitri leaned back, letting the conversation flow freely around him. So, Rose could act. That might explain the easy, unconcerned attitude she seemed to have if she wasn't talking to anyone.


	3. Chapter 3

_I'm really glad that people are reading this story and putting on their Story Alerts list and all, but I'd rather read your opinions on it (i.e.: _comments_) than just get an email that says you'll be notified when I put up a new chapter. :/ _

_More comments (preferably opinions and constructive criticism rather than simple ego stroking) = more writing._

* * *

Unsurprisingly, nobody saw Tasha for the rest of the week. Rumors were flying about – that she had OD's on whatever she was on and died, that she was back in rehab, that she had gotten expelled – and Dimitri felt uncomfortable about all of the gossip, probably because he'd been there. There were also new "Rose is a bitch" rumors, but those didn't fly very far because they'd only come from Tasha, who hadn't given the gossip mill anything to work with. No citation of revenge against ex-boyfriends, nor backstabbing best friends. Rose just kept her head down when she walked through the halls, and by Saturday, a new scandal had arisen: Someone had found a few marijuana plants in one of the greenhouses, and they didn't belong to any of the students.

When Ivan started cheering and asking around if anyone knew someone who could supply him with alcohol, Rose got stood up. "Want to come with me?" she asked Dimitri, nodding her head toward the feeders.

"The summer when I was thirteen, I had to watch my grandpa die of liver failure," she explained as they made their way toward the commons. The feeders were in an adjacent building. "He couldn't get a transplant because he was an alcoholic. So I'm not really a huge fan of drinking."

"It's okay," Dimitri said. He opened the door for her and she stepped inside, signing in with a female attendant before getting in back of the relatively short line. It was mid afternoon – around four a.m. – on a Saturday, and most of the students were off lazing around or pretending to study. The room was much busier around mealtimes.

"So, has anyone been talking to you about being assigned to a Moroi or something yet?" Rose asked. There was curiosity in her voice, as well as trepidation. Dimitri wondered what she knew.

"Some Mazur guy talked to me about something like that, yeah."

Rose blushed, examining the painted toenails that were peeking out from her sandals. "Is that the only reason we hang out?" she asked.

"Wha –? No," Dimitri said, a little shocked, but not completely surprised. He supposed that an outsider could look in and just see him sucking up to get brownie points. "No, I really like you. Lissa too – we aren't just hanging out with you guys because you have famous families." Or lack thereof.

Rose smiled, but she still didn't meet his eye.

When the attendant called Rose's name, Dimitri followed her to the cubicle her feeder sat in. He hadn't been in here yet, but as he passed cubicles, he started making a mental chart of the room's dynamics – which feeders were really crazy, which ones were here just because they were addicts, which ones had come because they didn't even fit in on the fringes of human society.

Rose's feeder seemed to be one of the crazy ones, judging by the dreamy look on her face, but it was hard to tell with so many bite marks on her neck. None of them were _that_ fresh, though, so most of the high had probably worn off a while ago. She smiled and put down her magazine when she saw Rose, brushing the hair away from her neck with her free hand.

"Hello, dear," she said.

"Hi. What's your name?"

"Alice Walker."

"I'm Rose."

With that, Rose leaned down, smoothing her own dark hair back so Dimitri could clearly see her fangs puncture the woman's neck from where he was standing. When Rose was done, she licked the wound clean, then her own lips. Dimitri looked away and started wondering how much it would cost him to phone home. He hadn't talked to his mom in a week, and being on a different continent somehow made him feel obliged to call more often.

"Dear?" Alice asked, almost completely lost in the new high.

"Hmm?" Rose paused, a finger checking the corner of her mouth for blood she missed.

"Keep your friend over there. Keep him close."

"Will do."

Rose took Dimitri's hand, and they left. Dimitri felt strangely uncomfortable. Feeders generally didn't talk when they were that high – he'd never experienced it before, but apparently a Moroi's bite got you _really_ high, and even though the feeling diminished some when their fangs were removed from your body, you were still flying for a good half hour. Rose seemed to share his feelings, and led him to the school's post office. Mail was a good distraction.

Dimitri didn't get anything, but Rose did. Her mail had been labeled "urgent" and had been taken to her room immediately, instead of waiting twenty-four hours at the office like normal mail. They went over to her dorm and Rose retrieved the package while Dimitri waited at the bottom of the stairs in the common room. She came down carrying a business-sized manila envelope and a medium-sized cardboard box.

"I found this box in front of Lissa's door," she said, frowning at it, "Smells kind of funky."

It smelled like regular cardboard to Dimitri, but he didn't say anything. There was still blood in her mouth, and he knew that it messed up your sense of smell – and taste – for hours afterward. (Then again, he just might have been bleeding for hours afterward, so who was he to judge?)

Lissa had returned to the lounge they'd been hanging out in earlier that day. Ivan was probably in his room getting smashed or partying it up with people he didn't know somewhere else. Rose pushed Lissa's box across the table and ripped open her envelope. Out fell pictures and a letter.

"Oh, my God," Lissa gasped, recoiling.

Tentatively, Dimitri reached out and picked one up. It was Rose at what looked like an airport. A woman with cropped auburn hair was with her – Dimitri recognized Janine Hathaway – as well as two men. One was in a suit and sunglasses, the classic bodyguard look, but another was dressed in civilian clothes. Only his posture told him off. He was too tense, too unused to the human crowd. It wasn't obvious, but Dimitri could still tell.

It was the classic stalker shot – candid, with out-of-focus people in front of the subject.

Rose also started to sort though them. She didn't say anything, and kept her face mostly blank. Most of the pictures were shots at the airport, but there were a few of them at what looked like a party – she was wearing a little black dress, had a soda in her hand, and was crowding in with several other girls for a group picture, a reckless smile on her face. The photographer had probably been in a corner – nobody was looking at him.

"I know this is all really creepy, and that I should be terrified," she finally said, holding up a picture of her at the party. "And I am – don't worry about that. But there's this one part of me that thinks some of these could be cropped into really awesome icons." She closed her eyes, scrunched up her face in embarrassment. "Let's just open your package for now, Lissa."

Lissa did so, using a pair of scissors from her pencil case. This time, everybody cried out in shock when she opened it.

There was a dead dog curled up in the box.

At least, that was what Dimitri thought it was. Since all animals thought dhampirs were freaks of nature and hated them, he'd never owned one and hadn't really ever been interested in them. He took a closer look, though, and noticed that the shape of its head was definitely canine. It was hard to tell what breed it was, though, what with all the blood from its slit throat matted into its fur.

Lissa started crying in choking little sobs, her hands over her mouth. Rose put her head between her knees and dry heaved, managing to keep the blood she'd just consumed inside.

Dimitri got up and rushed downstairs. "Someone sent my friend a dead dog," he told the front desk. The receptionist's mouth popped open in shock, but she stood up, wanting to verify his claim before making a fuss.

Three minutes later, several teachers and Kirova herself were standing in the lounge. There was no return address on either of the packages the girls' had received, but Dimitri doubted that Rose's stalker had also sent the dog. The trio stood back as someone took the cardboard box out of the room and another teacher shuffled together the photographs. Just as Dimitri noticed that the letter was nowhere in sight, Rose tapped him on the shoulder and held it out to him.

Almost immediately, Dimitri pushed it back. It was full of manic ramblings, singing Rose praises and telling her what a sweet girl she was in one sentence, then cursing her out for never looking at him and describing how he would kill her if he ever met her in person again in the next. Rose tossed it on the floor, making it look like someone had simply dropped it, and then wrapped her arms around Dimitri's waist. She really was shaking. He rubbed her back, thinking about what Alice had said barely an hour earlier. _Keep him close_.

He wondered if Alice was a psychic. His grandmother sometimes had predictive dreams, and it wasn't a far stretch to think that the ability might be cranked up by the right drugs or close contact with a person that the prediction involved. In this case, feeding was a very intimate thing – it gave life, kept Rose healthy.

* * *

Dimitri went to church Sunday morning, sitting in one of the back pews and only half paying attention to what the priest said. His mother had dragged him and the rest of his family to church every Sunday, a habit Olena had picked up from Yeva until she actually had began to believe, so now waking up early and getting dressed was just something he did. Plus, he liked the atmosphere of the little chapel. It was tiny and plain compared the one in his hometown, but the one at St. Basil's looked similar in design and decoration, which was a comfort.

He was surprised to see Rose sitting a few pews in front of him, wearing a light summer dress while she still could, but then kicked himself. You couldn't tell if someone was religious or not or where they went to church unless they were wearing something that specified it. It was stupid to assume that just because Rose had given her new friend a wary look when Lissa had once accessorized with a cross around her neck, she wasn't religious. Plenty of religious people disliked fanatics. Maybe she had an especially devout aunt or something.

Lissa was near the middle, sitting next to Christian Ozera. Every once in a while, they'd lean their heads together and whisper something to one another, and Dimitri wondered about their sudden familiarity. Lissa had never given the impression that she knew Christian personally while she had been explaining the social structure of St. Vladimir's.

After the service was over, Rose caught up to Dimitri.

"Hey," she said, "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine. How're you holding up?"

She pressed her lips together and cast a wary look around at the dissolving crowd before answering. "Fine, I guess. Those pictures really freaked me out."

"I'll keep a lookout for people with cameras," Dimitri promised, squeezing her hand. He attempted to let go, but she hung on, weaving their fingers together. Dimitri tried not to let it thrill him too much. He hadn't even known her for a week – no way could they just jump into dating. And it probably wasn't a very good idea in the first place – if they started dating and broke up, yet he became one of her guardians, the ensuing drama would probably give him ulcers before his time.

Besides, traditionally, Moroi and dhampirs didn't date. They had drunken one-night stands (in high school, at least, alcohol was nearly always involved) and then either went back to ignoring each other or bragging about their conquest. There were always special occurrences, like Karolina and the father of her son, Paul, but Rose would be in the limelight for much of her life. She was supposed to have Moroi children, not spend her life with a dhampir.

Dimitri was just about to pull his hand free when he saw Tasha. She was talking with some girls, happy as you please, but when she spied Dimitri and Rose, her expression soured. Dimitri thanked his lucky stars when she simply turned away from them and flounced off.

"What's her problem?" Both Rose and Dimitri turned to see Ivan standing behind them. He looked a little hung-over and wrinkled, despite the fresh clothes and damp hair. "And I've heard some funny rumors. Did something happen last night?"

Rose brought Ivan up to speed on the events that had taken place after he'd left go to drinking as Dimitri looked over their surroundings, searching for Lissa. When he saw her, talking to a teacher that was standing by the front door, he waved her over. She said her goodbyes and made her way through the crowd.

"I saw Tasha looking your way," she said. "Did she cause any trouble?"

"No," Dimitri said.

"Good, because I was talking to one of my teachers and heard some bad news," Lissa said, looking around. There weren't many people nearby, but she still kept her voice low. "Some people found a Strigoi hideout, and it's not too far from here. There are some caves a few miles away from the school, and that's apparently where a group of Strigoi have been staying."

"What?" Dimitri asked, shocked.

"_No_," Ivan said, his voice too loud.

"What Ivan said, except quieter and in a way that attracts less attention," Rose said. Her voice was hushed, as if volume alone would hide the worry and fear. "There can't be a Strigoi hideout so close to the school. I mean, I know they can't get in through the wards, but it's just... too close."

Dimitri's stomach started to twist itself into knots, making him regret eating the quick breakfast before church. Too much was happening, and too fast. There was the creeper stalking Rose, the psycho who had sent Lissa the dead dog, plus a possible fight with Tasha that would involve the gossip mill commenting on everything that was said or done, and now an actual group of Strigoi – who were usually so good at keeping to the 'works alone or in pairs' stereotype that the guardians had given them – that looked like they were planning to attack the school?

_No, they don't just 'look' like they're going to attack St. Vladimir's_, a voice in his head said. _They _will_ attack the school._

Before his brain could start worrying about _that_ can of worms, a shadowy figure materialized on his left. It was a basic head-on assault, and Dimitri felt his body reacting automatically. He pushed Rose out of the way and into Ivan, grabbing the attacker's arm and twisting it behind him, dislocating it with ease. Too easily – Dimitri pulled off the mask. It was a human. Distantly, he heard cries coming from across the campus.

"Get in the church!" Dimitri ordered, his mind spinning. What did this mean? Did _humans_ break the wards, letting the Strigoi in? Most of his thoughts were jumbled curses and wordless panic because he was unarmed and _wasn't there a reason he still needed a year of schooling before becoming a fully-fledged guardian?_, but he managed to incapacitate the man and follow his friends into the church without using too much brain power.

The priest came out of his office, still dressed in his church robes. "Do you need anything?" he asked.

"Um, some guy just tried to attack us and we heard screaming coming from across campus," Rose said. "So letting us hide in here for a while would be nice." She managed to flash him a smile, which Dimitri could already recognize as her apologetic smile, the one she used when she'd just finished saying something cutting and/or not entirely appropriate for the situation. Cracking a joke about a possible Strigoi attack fell into the latter category.

Dimitri moved back to the front doors and peeked out. He wanted to go see what was going on, but he was unarmed and would probably just get killed. Besides, a Strigoi may not be able to get into the church, but a human still could. He'd stay here with the Moroi.

_They come first_.

_

* * *

Wow, I totally did not mean to make so much happen in this chapter, but at least the next one will be exciting, huh?_


	4. Chapter 4

A side door crashed open and Dimitri heard screaming even before he saw the burning man, who was wearing the same kind of dark clothes as the other human. Almost immediately, Rose let the flames go out, an uncomfortable look on her face. Dimitri couldn't tell if it was from hurting someone in a church while standing next to a priest or because she had just used her fire magic to hurt someone – Moroi using any kind of magic in a harmful way was prohibited. _Do no harm_ was to a Moroi as _They come first_ was to a guardian.

Too soon, the human began to move again, writhing in pain from the burns. Dimitri grabbed an arm and dragged him outside. Vaguely, he wondered of all of the attacking humans were male, but shrugged it off as a coincidence. Most of them were, maybe, for size and brute strength – not that they had anything on the dhampirs in that category.

A guardian came up to the church. He had a cut over one eye, but didn't seem to be bleeding too badly.

"Are you alone?" he asked Dimitri, looking at the knot of Moroi sitting in the middle pews. Belatedly, Dimitri noticed that Christian Ozera had come in from somewhere.

Dimitri nodded. "And unarmed," he said, "What's going on? Did the humans break the wards?"

"I don't know yet, but there _are_ Strigoi on campus. Here." The man pulled out a silver stake from the inside of his jacket. "Take this. What grade are you in?"

"I'm a senior," Dimitri said, taking the stake gingerly. He'd only ever held a practice stake, which were the same shape, size, and weight as the real ones but lacked the charms Moroi had put on them. "We did some practice at the end of last year, though, so in theory, I know what I'm doing." He didn't sound very sure of himself. The practice dummies' bones had been hard to get around, and they hadn't been moving or trying to rip his head off like real Strigoi would.

"Remember – go up under the ribcage. Now stay in the church, I need to find the other novices." With that, the man was gone. Dimitri walked over to the Moroi.

"How long is it until the sun is up?" Rose asked, looking around the small circle.

The priest checked his watch, and swallowed. "It's barely eleven thirty," he said. "This could be going on for a long time." Dimitri did the quick mental math and shivered. Over six hours, depending on when the sun came up and how close the Strigoi cut it. He wondered what was happening to the Moroi outside the church, how they were fairing.

"We're fucked," Christian said.

"Not us 'cause we're in a church... but yes. We as a school are fucked," Rose said, saving herself in the nick of time. For someone who didn't think very long before speaking, she was good at not saying anything particularly damning.

Dimitri turned away from the quiet conversation. He couldn't get distracted.

Just as he was thinking the words, a group of humans came into the church. Several of them immediately went down in flames – Christian apparently had no such qualms about rules or making himself look bad to others when it came to self-defense – but there were still enough to keep Dimitri busy and nab some of the Moroi behind him.

Knowing full well that ones attacking him were just a distraction, he moved into action, doing a silent headcount as he went. _Nine, eight, seven, six, five..._ He was careful to only incapacitate, not kill... although what was St. Vladimir's going to do with them when they woke up? One woman dropped a knife as she went down, and Dimitri picked it up, easily running the next man through.

As fast as he was, though, one man still got an arm around Rose, holding a knife up to her throat. Dimitri didn't know if he had been sent to get her or if it was just a coincidence that the man happened to reach the person Dimitri was supposed to guard first.

"If I start burning, I'm going to kill her!" the man shouted, looking at all of the Moroi. Dimitri noticed that he wasn't very educated about the living vampires – there were subtle signs that usually told you what element a Moroi specialized in, ranging from their eyes to character to zodiac sign. Add everything up, and you usually came up with an element (Lissa seemed to be the exception, but then again, she hadn't specialized). Rose and Christian were the only fire users in the room.

"No one's going to attack you," Ivan said, taking a step backwards. Dimitri also backed up, his boot hitting a body. If the man ran for it and Dimitri was by the door... there was a good chance that the scuffle would kill Rose.

The man did run for it, bringing the knife away from her throat to prevent an accidental death. In his haste, though, he tripped over an unconscious colleague and went flying. A few humans were upright, though, no longer unconscious but still a bit fuzzy. Someone managed to grab Rose, who screamed and tried to lash out, and headed for the door. Dimitri raced after them, switching his knife for the stake and praying that Christian could hold off anyone who tried to attack them.

He and Rose made it out the door at the same time, but Dimitri didn't go after her. Instead, he headed for the Strigoi. If Dimitri didn't kill the Strigoi now, she could play the send-in-humans game all day.

Her moves were mostly offensive, with very little defense training, so she faltered a bit more every time Dimitri managed to get a hit on her with the stake. He didn't hit her much – she was older than him and had been fighting for a lot longer – but the stinging wounds made by the charmed silver were enough to keep her reflexes off until he managed to scratch her again. Through the corner of his eye, Dimitri could see the person holding Rose go up in flames.

The slight catch as she saw the fire was all the opening Dimitri needed. She'd been human before she'd been turned, so he went for a direct hit, breaking bones and ripping through flesh. She wasn't dead completely, so he let her fall to the ground and then made the more traditional stab, going up under the ribs to get to the heart. As he loped back to the church, her body caught on fire.

Dimitri felt numb as he closed the doors.

The first time he killed a Strigoi wasn't the first time he ended a life.

"Are you okay?" Rose asked. Her face was ashen, but she was still standing. Her hair had somehow gotten mussed and a strap on her shoe had broken when she'd been dragged outside.

"I'll be fine," Dimitri said. He looked down at the bodies strew across the floor and felt sorry for the priest. Some were still smoking, and the smell of burning flesh would stick to the walls and ceiling for ages. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed a leg and began dragging bodies outside. Lissa and Rose teamed up, as well as Christian and the priest. The first body Ivan touched was dead, but he manfully nudged it to the door with his foot and then went and sat up near the altar to dry heave in peace.

Over the next few hours, things were calm. Every once in a while, Dimitri went outside to kill a lurking Strigoi, making a tidy pile of corpses in the process, but there were no more attacking humans. When the first signs of dawn finally arrived, Lissa woke Christian up from his doze and they all walked outside to survey the damage.

A few guardians showed up almost as soon as the group stepped outside. They asked Dimitri a few questions – what he had done, what had happened to the group, how many Strigoi he had killed (Dimitri showed them the pile of bodies that had began smoldering in the sunlight) – and then, seeing as the only injuries were bruises and scrapes that had stopped bleeding long ago, directed everyone to the commons, where a hastily-prepared dinner was being served.

By that time, though, Dimitri didn't have much of an appetite. He was mentally and physically exhausted and just wanted to sleep, sort through the damage later. But he followed everyone else to the commons anyway. He wouldn't be able to make it out of bed in the morning if he didn't eat now.

Moroi parents were beginning to arrive already, rushing into the building and frantically scanning the crowd. More guardians were already pouring onto the campus, too, coming from the families and anywhere else that could spare a few, and Dimitri knew that somewhere on the outskirts of the St. Vladimir's grounds, the thick layers of wards were being rebuilt anew.

Dimitri and the rest of the group – sans the priest, who had already started to weave through the students, offering a shoulder to cry on or whatever else he could do to help the bereaved, and Christian, who had gotten snatched away by a worried uncle – took their plates outside and sat near the doors. Inside was too crowded, the grief almost tangible as parents realized why they couldn't find their children. Almost immediately after the group sat down, Janine Hathaway arrived, pulling Rose up and holding her.

"I was so scared – when I heard – oh my God," she choked out, burying her face into Rose's shoulder. "Where were you when it all happened? Are you hurt?" Rose was too busy crying to answer, all of the fear and tension that had accumulated over the past seven hours leaking out of her body.

Ivan's mother showed up soon after Janine had gotten her own plate and returned to the group, but Denise Zeklos merely looked her boy over and then turned around to find Kirova or some other administrator, anyone who could assure her that St. Vladimir's was still a safe place to send her child. "Love you too, Mom," Ivan said, holding back tears as they walked her stalk back across campus. Dimitri put his arm around Ivan, scooting closer so that every line on their sides touched, and Ivan was free to snot and/or cry all over Dimitri's shoulder.

Lissa's parental figure, a close friend of her late father's, Victor Dashkov, showed up to make sure she was okay. He checked in with her and they talked for a while, but then he left to go see how his own daughter had faired. Natalie had walked by Dimitri a few times when he'd been in line to get food, so he didn't have any worries about what Victor's face would look like when they saw him again.

"What you think is going to happen to St. Vladimir's?" Lissa asked, looking around the school. A few groups of people had begun cleaning up the quad, but there were some signs of battle that couldn't be erased.

"I heard early graduation for the senior novices," Janine said, nodding her head toward Dimitri, "but I don't think that would be a very good plan to send you all out just because of a massacre." By that time, Rose had told her mother of their time in the church, and Janine seemed very grateful of Dimitri. He wondered if she knew about what Mazur was doing – it made sense to think that she had hired him for the job – and if she would put in a good word.

Dimitri made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and then stood up. "Does anyone have a cell phone? I should probably call my mom before she hears about this." Janine passed him hers, and he moved to the corner of the commons building, sitting down with his back against the wall. He dialed the number easily.

"Hello?" Yeva, his grandmother picked up the phone on the last ring.

"Hi, Grandma," Dimitri said, switching easily to Russian.

Yeva moved her mouth away from the phone, but Dimitri could still hear her next words, "He's alive, now stop crying!" A button beeped on her side of the line, and then suddenly Dimitri could hear other noises – Olena, trying to quiet her sobs, which were quickly turning from grief to relief, Karolina hushing her three-year-old Paul. St. Basil's had started at the same time as St. Vladimir's, so Sonya and Viktoria were gone from the house.

"Oh, my God," Olena said. "What happened, Dimitri? Where were you? Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"

"I'm fine, Mom," Dimitri said in the most reassuring tone he could manage. "I'm just really, really tired right now. We were in the chapel the whole time – Strigoi couldn't get to us. The attack was right after church ended."

"'We?'" Karolina repeated. "Who was with you?"

"Rosemarie Hathaway, Vasilisa Dragomir, Christian Ozera, Ivan..." Dimitri recited, "Oh, and the priest."

Yeva snorted, but Dimitri couldn't tell from the noise alone whether it was because she disapproved of him making only Moroi friends – and famous (or infamous, in Christian's case) ones at that – or if it was because he had mentioned the priest last, like an afterthought, and she thought he'd been raised better. But Olena and Karolina – and maybe even Paul – made little cooing sounds of alarm.

"You were the only dhampir there?" Karolina asked.

"I'm fine," Dimitri repeated. "We all stayed in the church."

"What's going on now?" Olena asked. "Are they going to close the school?"

"I don't know," Dimitri said. "We've been hearing all sorts of funky rumors. I'll call you back when I get any solid information, though, okay?" He could almost visualize Olena pursing her lips, deciding whether or not to keep questioning him.

"Is Ivan's mother there?" Olena asked.

"Yeah, she showed up for a while. But then she left. Rose's mom is here, though," Dimitri said, as if that could offer Olena any comfort. "I'm borrowing her phone."

"A few nights ago," Yeva cut in, "You were in an office or something like that. Two Moroi were there, a man and a woman. What happened?"

"Some guy told me that he had looked through my file and deemed me an appropriate candidate to be one of Rose's guardians."

"He looked like Abe Mazur."

"How do you know Mazur?"

Stupid question – Yeva seemed to know everyone. When she'd been a guardian, she'd bounced around in the uppermost circles of Moroi society, even guarding the King for a few months before he died. After the King, though, she'd met Dimitri's grandfather and had decided to settle down, moving back to her tiny hometown just in time to give birth. Yeva still kept up with her contacts (or, as time marched on for everyone except the old woman, their successors), and she was often the first person to know about calamities or new decrees.

"I just do," Yeva said, as if that settled the matter. "I'll talk to him, see where you are on the list."

"Um, thanks," Dimitri said. He sighed, leaning his head back against the wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Janine standing up, gathering the empty plates around her. "I should probably go now. Bye."

"Bye," the three women chorused. Paul gave a little gurgle, probably ejecting spit all over Karolina as he did so.


	5. Chapter 5

_Huge thanks to PeaceRoseG'ladheon for commenting and being the first one to give _constructive criticism_. Hopefully, they're not the only one who does that. *glares accusingly at the rest of commenters*_

* * *

What with all of the pain Dimitri regularly put himself through, he was surprised at how much getting his _molnija_ marks hurt. Of course, there was a difference between getting repeatedly stabbed with tiny needles that injected ink into your skin and not blocking a punch to the face or kick to the gut. And there actually was a difference between accidentally pricking yourself with a needle on the finger and getting a tattoo on the back of your neck, so the surprise wasn't groundless.

After he got his tattoos – three on top, three on the bottom, with room in between the rows for his promise mark, and a star-shaped _zvezda_ tattoo to the left of it all that showed he'd been in a battle – Dimitri received the typical praise from the promised guardians and went to stand in back with the rest of the marked novices. Because there had been so many novices who killed Strigoi, the guardians had decided on a large ceremony instead of so many smaller individual ones. Most of the novices in the room were seniors who had received a stake somewhere in the midst of all of the chaos, but there were a few juniors and even a sophomore that had survived killing a Strigoi by sheer dumb luck.

When the last novice had finally received her marks, they were all given a lecture about how to care for their tattoos, and then released into the bright midmorning sunlight.

Dimitri was heading back to his dorm when he saw Rose carefully edging around the quad, trying to stick to the shadows. The academy had shifted to a daylight schedule, and while it was good for safety, the Moroi didn't like it very much. Few made any fuss, realizing it was a security issue, but there were still several Moroi – Ivan's mother among them – that simply didn't understand that on the off chance that a Strigoi attacked them now, it would be when everyone was sleeping and there would be fewer casualties.

He caught up quickly to the Moroi when she sighed and slid down the side of the library to rest. Some Moroi were more sensitive to the light than others, and Rose, unfortunately, was one of them – she felt nauseated and sick if out in bright sunlight for longer than a few minutes. Staying out of the sun's direct rays did help, but not by much. Dimitri reached a hand down to help her stand.

"Where to?" he asked, once she was up and steady.

"Clinic," she said in a faint voice. "I need my birth control. And maybe to throw up."

Once they were in the reception area of the medical clinic – there was a short line, and Dimitri surmised that Friday must be the day students picked up their needed medications – Rose perked up enough to notice the bandages on the back of Dimitri's neck. She touched the gauze gently, feeling the rough fabric with the tips of her fingers, and Dimitri felt his stomach do an inappropriate back flip.

"Did they hurt?" Rose asked. She didn't ask him how many Strigoi he'd killed, and Dimitri was thankful for that. He'd probably need years of therapy before he was ever going to talk about it willingly.

"Yeah," he said, "but it wasn't too bad. They could have, I don't know, stuck my hand under a hot iron for five minutes." Dimitri's hand actually hurt from saying that, phantom pains from the time he'd almost burned off all of the fingerprints on his right hand on a hot pan. Oh, to be five years old and stupid again.

"Ow, I'm sorry," Rose sympathized as a nurse called her up to the front desk.

Once she had received her tiny paper bag, Dimitri and Rose stepped outside again. She slipped her hand into his, making Dimitri's stomach do another back flip.

"So, um, why do you get that?" he asked, aiming for a distraction. Hearing about a secret boyfriend Rose had never mentioned in the week they'd known each other would be distracting. It would also make Dimitri extremely jealous and possibly pissed off, but he could deal with emotional extremes now.

"You know how I was just about to pass out when you came over?" Rose asked. "I'd spend a week like that every month, except with more puking and cramps and mood swings and blood pooling everywhere I sit. Now I just kind of internally bitch about everything for a few days." She paused. "Sorry, that was a bit graphic, wasn't it?"

"I've actually heard worse," Dimitri finally said. His brain was sticking on the "blood pooling everywhere I sit" part like a scratched CD. "There's only one other boy in my family of seven, and he's three years old right now, so nobody really treats periods like they're a secret or anything."

"Oh, man," Rose laughed as they entered the library. Dimitri noticed that she slipped the paper bag easily into the kangaroo pocket on the front of her black St. Vladimir's sweatshirt. "That must have sucked for you."

"You have no idea. It was incredibly traumatizing."

The mood around St. Vladimir's had shifted dramatically after the Strigoi attack, and the somber mood wouldn't change very soon. The feeling seemed to be more pronounced in the library than anywhere else, probably because you would be immediately hushed if you spoke too loudly or too vehemently. Dimitri and Rose moved into a corner of the expansive reference section. The hundreds, if not thousands, of books that separated them from their peers – and the librarians – would muffle their voices and give them some privacy. Rose slid down to the floor, and Dimitri followed.

"Did anyone tell you what's going to happen?" Rose asked. As she spoke, her fingers touched the bandages on the back of his neck again, her thumb rubbing across the top row of _molnija_ marks even if she couldn't see them. "About the school?"

"No one's said anything specific," Dimitri said. He hadn't actually spent much time with any of the school's guardians, except for that morning. And then there'd just been a few complaints about the early ceremony – not everyone was totally adjusted to the new daylight schedule – and jokes about nothing in particular before the tattooing ritual had started. "But I think they're going to keep us in school."

"If they're going to do that, why don't classes start up again?" Rose asked. An expression of pent-up energy flashed across her face, quickly disappearing, and Dimitri was secretly glad that he wasn't the only one going a little stir-crazy with the lack of schedule. They'd been out of school a week after only having three days of classes. It was crazy.

"They've got to find replacement teachers and extra guardians," Dimitri said, reasoning it out as he spoke. "The ones from families will need to go back eventually, and I don't think any Moroi would want to work here after what just happened. Because humans were involved and they broke the wards with stakes, we can't really do anything except have more guardians patrol the perimeter. More wards wouldn't really help."

"Guess so," Rose conceded.

Dimitri decided to change the subject. He'd thought about the topic a lot during the past week, but it was like running on a hamster wheel – lots and lots of hard and exhausting work, but absolutely no progress whatsoever. "Have you got anymore stalker pictures?" he asked. It wasn't the best subject, but it was a change.

"Yeah," Rose said. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her left arm around them, keeping her right hand attacked to Dimitri's. "I gave them all to Kirova – they're doing some sort of investigation." Rose paused, her thumb rhythmically stroking Dimitri's. "I did make a copy of one, though." With that, she let go of Dimitri and reached into her bra, pulling out a folded piece of printer paper and handing it to him. Dimitri opened it, trying not to notice how some spots were warmer than others from touching Rose's skin.

The picture was of Rose, in a feeder cubicle. Her long, white fangs were only a few centimeters away from Alice's scarred and pockmarked neck. In the corner of the photo was a smear of something brown – part of Dimitri's duster. This had been taken barely an hour before Rose had received her first envelope of pictures.

"You can't tell on this one," Rose said, "but the original looked almost like a black and white picture colored in. I forgot the terminology for it, but people used to watercolor black and white pictures that were printed on rough paper way back when."

"Maybe the guy had access to security footage, cropped a picture, and cleaned it up?" Dimitri suggested, shuddering at the idea. Guardians were supposed to protect you, not stalk you. Moroi put an incredible amount of trust in them. Without dhampirs to protect them, they were completely defenseless – even the fire users.

"In a TV show I saw, the guy was able to use an algorithm or some other math thing to clean up an incredibly funky security tape," Rose said. "But he was a math genius, and it was TV, so I don't know. Guess anything's possible." She didn't look very happy at the idea, but she certainly didn't seem to be as upset as Dimitri, who had been brought up knowing exactly what being a guardian entailed. Most Moroi didn't really get it, but it wasn't their fault – their schooling was completely focused on themselves and their politics, with very little emphasis placed on the people who were supposed to keep them safe. It was another flaw in the system, one that desperately needed to be given a facelift.

Dimitri refolded the picture and handed it back to Rose, feeling ill. Then he stood, brushing off his jeans. Rose got up as well, sticking the photo back in her bra. It also looked like she was rearranging some other things, but Dimitri didn't ask what they were. He and Rose had talked about enough "taboo" subjects that day, and it wasn't even lunchtime.

Just as he was about to leave, Rose caught his arm.

"Hey, Dimitri? Thanks," she said, "For everything."

Then she pulled his head down and kissed him.

It was meant to be tender, tentative, but somehow sparks of electricity got mixed in, making Dimitri's entire body buzz and heating things up fast. As Rose's tongue touched his bottom lip, Dimitri realized that most of his arguments against them dating were quickly falling apart. He liked kissing Rose. Things would be awkward if he kept their relationship at "just friends" after he kissed her back like this... and Ivan couldn't be too pissed about Dimitri finally dating someone. Could he?

"Wow," an obnoxious voice cut in, "You guys are really hooking up in the _library?_"

Rose pulled away from Dimitri and faced the intruder. Following her lead, Dimitri kept his face blank, forcing down unwanted emotions and just keeping mild surprise close to the surface as he faced Tasha.

"Oh, my God," Rose gasped dramatically, putting a hand to her chest. "Teenagers are _kissing!_ Somebody needs to call the _chastity police!_" Dimitri let his lips quirk up into a half smile, but Tasha sneered.

"Just wait until your mother finds out who you were kissing."

Then she turned on her heel and left, leaving Rose feeling slightly confused and not very frightened at all. Dimitri, however, felt a coil of fear slip into his stomach. Janine could just as easily take back her recommendation and tell Mazur that he wasn't cut out to be Rose's guardian.

"Why exactly would my mother care, and how would Tasha manage to contact her in the first place?" Rose asked, combing through her hair with her fingers. Dimitri kind of wanted to help her with it – she had very soft, very clean-feeling hair that flowed in slight waves all the way down her back. Instead, he moved his eyes back to her face and focused his attention to what she was saying. "That was a lousy threat."

"Could you do any better?" Dimitri asked.

"Not really," Rose admitted, her lips twitching, "but I guess I could lie and tell Kirova that I found us naked on the floor, or at least doing some heavy petting."

Silence fell, and the pair listened as a gaggle of girls wandered around in an adjacent row, wondering out loud exactly how to find whatever they were searching for (and what exactly it was in the first place – novel? History book?). "How do you tell if a book is fiction?" one girl whined, causing Dimitri to wince (when he glanced over at Rose, he saw that she an equally disturbed look on her face, even though she'd claimed to normally dislike reading). As an avid reader – mostly of westerns, but anything vaguely interesting would do in a pinch, even if it was an autobiography of a boy-turned-girl – it almost physically hurt to hear that. Or maybe he just needed to go put ice on the back of his neck.

"Girls are stupid," Rose sighed quietly. "I'm sorry you're attracted to them. I've heard they get less stupid in college, though." Dimitri couldn't help but laugh.

"_People_ are stupid," he corrected, taking her hand. "Let's go find Lissa and Ivan – it's almost time for lunch."

Lissa was nowhere to be found, though, and Ivan's Russian Social Studies teacher informed the pair that he was in detention for drawing curse words on the wall of the third-floor girl's bathroom. So Rose and Dimitri found a quiet table in the corner of the commons and ate there by themselves.

"So, I know you don't really want us dating," Rose began. Seeing Dimitri's questioning look, she explained, "Last Sunday when I was holding your hand, you kind of got this thinking-slash-uncomfortable look on your face, and I'm assuming it's because you might be my guardian, blah, blah, blah... and our species don't normally date."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Dimitri said. It felt good to be on the same wavelength as Rose, even if she wasn't the most logical person at times.

"Anyway, I was thinking about that a few nights ago – well, among other things, like how I should probably watch that Donnie Darko movie this weekend – and I was thinking that we should at least try to go out for a while. Otherwise we'll have all this UST everywhere and it's going to drive me crazy."

"UST?" Dimitri asked.

"Unresolved Sexual Tension," Rose said, "Remind me to e-mail you a link to TV Tropes."

"E-mail me a link to TV Tropes," Dimitri said, straight-faced, causing Rose to laugh aloud and accidentally stab herself in the nose with her fork. Grumbling, she wiped her face off with a brown paper napkin and regained her composure.

"So, um, as terribly awkward and unromantic as this sounds, was that a yes to dating?" Rose asked, peeking up at him through her long eyelashes. Officially asking someone out was always embarrassing.

"We'll try," Dimitri promised, trying to hide his mixed feelings. He was happy he'd get a chance, of course, but... _This is going to end badly_, a voice in his head told him. There was going to be a distraught Ivan to deal with, the drama of a Moroi and dhampir going out, doubled by Rose's reputation as a royal and part of the dwindling Hathaway family...

Rose simply smiled, looking relieved at the acceptance, but didn't try to do anything other than that.


	6. Chapter 6

_Sorry for the time skip, but nothing interesting would have happened. Also sorry if I upset you with the _Twilight_ bashing. I personally am an anti, but I don't have anything against the sane fans. _Insane_ fans, however, of any fandom kind of tick me off (except for PinkMouseDudette – on the off chance that you read this, you know who you are). _

_Oh, and no. I don't know Dimitri's birthday. I've narrowed it down to anywhere from late July to early September, but that's 8 weeks. Kind of a large time frame. I'd appreciate it if someone could get an approximate month, though. _

* * *

The remainder of September, and then the months of October and November passed quickly. Dimitri turned eighteen without much fanfare, although his mother sent a package containing presents and a few more items he'd forgotten to pack. How she kept on finding them, he had no idea, but Olena and Karolina were cleaning his room out so Viktoria could use it when she came home from school, so that probably had something to do with it.

Tasha went to some kind of 90-day rehab program, then finally returned with what seemed like an obsession of Dimitri – she was always wandering up to him and asking about where he was going, what he was doing, who he was going to be guarding after he graduated (so far, Dimitri had managed to shrug the question off by saying that he didn't really know – which was technically true, seeing as Dimitri hadn't received any formal acceptance letter – but Tasha knew he was lying).

Rose's stalker kept on sending her his pictures, but after receiving them on a weekly basis for so long, most of the fear was gone. They were still creepy and sometimes gave her nightmares, but he hadn't tried to make any other contact, so... why be constantly afraid?

Lissa specialized – in a forgotten element called spirit, which used the wielder's life force to do miraculous things like healing or making plants grow. Dimitri wasn't entirely sure what had gone down, but he did know that Victor Dashkov had kidnapped Lissa so she could cure his disease. And then, when he'd been arrested, he'd convinced his own daughter to become a Strigoi so she could break him out of his holding cell. Lissa was now very happily going out with Christian Ozera. They loved each other, there was no doubt about that, but they publicly went out mostly for shock value.

Ivan had stopped talking to first Dimitri, and then to Rose. He saw Dimitri's decision to go out with Rose as a personal insult for some reason, and Rose was guilty by association. After a week of giving them the cold shoulder and only talking to Lissa at lunch, Ivan had moved over to Camille Conta's lunch table. Dimitri had tried at first to fix their relationship, but Ivan remained obstinate. The only way Ivan would talk to Dimitri again was if he and Rose broke up. Letting go of Ivan was easier in the long run.

Now, it was the end of English. There were only a few more minutes until winter break started, and the teacher was trying to cram in some last minute information about the essays they were supposed to be doing over the two-week break. Dimitri had always got good marks on the essays he'd turned into the man, so he didn't try to listen to the teacher above all the racket the students were making.

When the bell finally rang, Dimitri packed up his things and said goodbye to the few acquaintances he knew and the teacher. He dumped his backpack in his room, and then he made his way over to Rose's dorm. She was just coming down the stairs when he got there, straightening her pulling on her winter coat and running her hands through her just-brushed hair, checking for little knots that the brush had missed. Rose was constantly staying up too late – there was always a project, something that made her lose track of time – so she used her free eighth period to sleep.

"What were you working on?" Dimitri asked, catching her fingers in his. He and Rose weren't totally open with their relationship in public, but it wasn't like they were trying to hide it.

"I was making a _Twilight_ dress up game," Rose admitted. "You can choose whatever characters you want and dress them up and shit, but if you put Bella and Edward together, they get stupid faces. As in, 'broken brain' stupid. Speaking of which, what's up with yours?"

Dimitri straightened out his features into something not so sickened. "One of my half-sisters is obsessed with those books. She's thirteen, and actually thinks that Edward exists and will eventually take her away so they can get married." She also wanted to have Dimitri's babies, and had been throwing herself at him every time they'd met for the past two years. It wasn't often, seeing as how her father still had a restraining order against Dimitri that wouldn't expire until the boy was eighteen, but it still scared the hell out of him. At one time, Olena had taken the girl aside and told her in the goriest, most realistic terms possible, what would happen to the thirteen-year-old's body if she had children, but the girl had called it bullshit and was undeterred.

"I was talking about the bruise here," Rose said after a beat, touching Dimitri's jaw, "but that's also a valid explanation. Where exactly is this girl's mother?"

"I have no idea," Dimitri said. "Where do unemployed, insanely rich women spend their days here?"

Rose shrugged. "Spa? I don't know anyone unemployed. Mom and all of her friends have committees to run and other important things to do."

Dimitri turned his thoughts to the weekend. On Saturday, he, Rose, and Lissa would get on a plane and fly to the Royal Court. There was some fancy Christmas social that was for special royal Moroi only, and both of the girls were wanted there. Strangely, whenever they had talked about the party in front of Dimitri, neither one of the girls had seemed pleased at the invitation or the idea of a royal function. They had seemed... jittery, almost. Nervous. Dimitri had the feeling that the party wasn't just to celebrate the holiday or talk about politics, and wished – not for the first time – that there would be some way he could get into the room. Another bizarre thing was that Christian wasn't invited, and Dimitri had no explanation for that. Dimitri wasn't going to the party, but he was going on the trip anyway. Why not Christian?

Rose seemed to be following his thought pattern, at least to an extent. "What would you do over break if you weren't coming with me and Lissa?" she asked. By now, the couple was simply standing in a knee-deep pile of snow some ways away from a salted path. Dimitri had little recollection of how they'd ended up there. "Would you go home?" Rose asked.

Dimitri shook his head. "Probably not," he said. "It'd be too expensive to get from the middle of Montana to the middle of Siberia, and it'd take too long. I wouldn't get to spend very much time at home. And since Ivan and I are the only exchange students from St. Basil's, the school wouldn't send over a plane just for us." As they spoke, a plane was probably leaving for Alder, a popular east coast school.

"What about you?" Dimitri asked. "Would you go see your mom?"

Rose grinned. "Yeah," she said. "We usually spend a few days at home, and then go skiing or something for a week. Last year was really fun, even if we had to wait twelve hours at the airport 'because our plane was delayed."

"Where's home for you?" Dimitri asked.

"In winter, we used to got to an old safe house in Maine and then spend the summer at my grandmother's in Brazil," Rose said. The pink that was in her cheeks from the cold deepened as she spoke. "Now my mom and I just go to Maine whenever I get a break."

"You live there year round?" Dimitri was a little surprised, to say the least. Royal Moroi typically had seasonal homes, staying in whatever hemisphere that had the least sunlight.

Rose shrugged. "There's a lot of Moroi in the town, and there's a nice little tunnel system underneath the whole thing." Her body language said the conversation was over – and that it was cold and they should go inside – so Dimitri turned the conversation to a lighter topic and steered them to Lissa's dorm. On Fridays after school, she usually ran a study group in her dorm's first floor common room.

That Janine was still somewhat ostracized among her family said a lot of not very nice things about them. Dimitri could kind of get Christian and Tasha being out of favor, because their parents had purposely turned into Strigoi – something that had happened maybe ten times in the last two centuries – and then tried to massacre the family's guardians. (The fear that the twins would become Strigoi should have gone away by now, though.)

But Janine being unaccepted among her family because she refused to marry or name the father of her child? It had happened before, and the mothers had usually retained their social standing (and if they slipped, it was never very far). There were plenty of reasons not to marry a man – maybe it had been a one night stand. Maybe she didn't even know his name. Maybe she'd been raped. Maybe she'd had an affair and he was already married. Maybe marrying him would have worse consequences than not doing so.

Either way, it shouldn't have even mattered, not after all of this time. Rose was a Hathaway by blood. She could have children. Why couldn't Janine's mother just be glad of that and leave the rest of it alone?

Dimitri sighed, remembering the years of anger management and therapy he'd taken. Raging over what Rose's grandmother thought wouldn't do a thing. And when she eventually died, Janine would have a final chance to redeem herself. Right?

"What's on your mind?" Rose asked. She paused to stomp snow off of her boots.

Dimitri briefly considered just saying, "nothing" and leaving it at that, but knew Rose would never fall for it. He had to give her something. "Why didn't you guys ever invite Christian?" he asked.

"Lissa already knew he had plans," Rose said.

"Oh."

* * *

Although the Royal Court was covered in snow, it was still imposing and ostentatious in its beauty. Most of the castle-inspired buildings were made out of tan stone, and in the light from an ornate streetlamp, Dimitri could make out gold decorations surrounding the windows and doors. He assumed the designers had modeled the style off of Russian blueprints, although there wasn't a huge use of color here like in his native country. As Dimitri walked the short distance from the landing strip to the guest housing, he could see pathways leading to other quads and courtyards similar to the ones at St. Basil's and St. Vladimir's, except for the fact that neither of the schools had statues or fountains in theirs (safety hazard, probably – wouldn't want the kiddies to play in the water and h_eaven forbid_ one should climb on a statue!).

Dimitri was surprised when he was assigned a room between Rose and Lissa – he'd assumed that lowly dhampirs wouldn't mingle with the rich and blood drinking. Then again, this _was_ guest housing. Social faux pas probably weren't so inexcusable here, where everything was temporary and conversable.

The trio went in to Lissa's room first, looking over every little thing. Her suite seemed to be arranged like a studio apartment, with a bed at one end and a sunken living room – complete with a plasma TV on the wall and magazines and coasters on the coffee table – at the other. In between was a small kitchen with a microwave, mini-fridge, pantry, and some dishes. Doors lead off to a master bathroom and a large closet.

Rose immediately went to go inspect the mini-fridge, and Lissa dragged in the last of her baggage and began to unpack. Dimitri decided to go to the living room portion and check that out – sunken rooms had always fascinate him for some reason, probably just because of their rarity in his life.

There weren't just magazines and coasters on the coffee table. There was also a manila folder. Assuming it contained just general rules or something like that, Dimitri opened it. It took him a minute to process all of the names and pictures and information that were on the first page. Then it hit him.

These were marriage prospects, suitable men that Lissa could marry. The pictures were so she could recognize them. (_Where? At the social? Is that why Christian didn't come? Did the girls know Lissa would get this? If that was true, why had Rose invited Dimitri? Janine would be here – had she _asked_ Rose to invite him?_) The miniature family trees were proof of their bloodline. There was also a short bio, and the whole thing kind of reminded Dimitri of a dating website profile. Except on paper. And meeting him at least once was mandatory.

His mind racing, Dimitri flipped to the O section. No Ozera, unsurprisingly, but there were a few non-royals from very famous families. Tasha and Christian took the brunt of their family's fall from grace, but the rest of the family obviously suffered as well, even the far flung relatives who hadn't know of their parents' existence before the couple had turned.

Rose was in the closet, helping Lissa unpack. Neither of the girls had seen him pick up the folder. They probably just thought he was reading the TV guide or something. But honesty – along with lying, cheating, stealing, and the ability to hotwire any car built before 2007 – was something his grandmother had instilled in him from a young age, so Dimitri turned around and called out, "Hey, Lissa? Have you seen this?"

With a confused expression, the Princess handed a shirt to Rose and came over. Confusion turned into fear, which – with some difficulty – turned into resigned loathing. Clearly, she'd known this was going to happen, but that obviously didn't change much, except maybe the speed of her shifting facial expressions.

Rose came over and read over her friend's shoulder. Her expression was similar to Lissa's – she despised it, but there was nothing she could do. "Wonder if we have any overlap," she muttered.

"Yeah," Lissa agreed with the same mocking tone, "Because I _really_ want to make such a fuss that they just pick someone without my input at all."

"I know, right? That way I don't even have to pick out the dress or shoes – I just have to show up at the church when they tell me to," Rose continued, nodding her head. Then, in a more serious voice, she pointed to Sander Badica's picture. "He's ugly. Don't pick him." Lissa looked like she was torn between laughing and crying, and a funny little giggle escaped her mouth.

"I should go unpack my stuff," Dimitri said, moving toward the door. His sisters, crying over breakups or fights with friends or horrible blind dates? Dimitri could handle that. He knew his sisters, knew when they wanted to be left alone. Lissa, though? Or even Rose? No. He knew them as people, knew their secrets, but he didn't know them emotionally. Leaving before it all started would be better.

Rose apparently had the same thoughts. She rubbed Lissa's shoulders, and then backed up. "Me too," she said. Then, in almost a whisper, "I'm sorry."

Outside, Rose just wrapped her arms around Dimitri's waist, burying her face into his shoulder. He stroked her hair but said nothing, waiting for her to compose herself.

"I'm sorry," she said again, finally pulling away and blinking.

"It's no problem."

"It's just... scary." She looked dangerously close to crying again, but took his hand and led them to her room anyway. The telltale manila folder was sitting on her coffee table as well, but she walked past it and into the bathroom. A minute later, the shower started, and Dimitri heard a distinctive thump as her jeans – weighed down by a heavy belt – hit the tile floor.

Dimitri sat down on the couch and started flipping through the names, making a mental tally in his head. These men were all from America, of course, but Dimitri had heard of a few during his stay in the states. _Womanizer, womanizer, drinker, don't know, don't know, don't know..._

What kind of horrible person would give a girl – a girl who was still comparatively young and naïve – a list of names and tell her to pick her future husband? Why not let her date, and then influence who she married by talks and or how you treated the current boyfriend?

And then another thought occurred to him.

_Did Rose have a deadline?_


	7. Chapter 7

_Guys, I seriously need your feedback. Are the funny parts not funny? If Rose and Dimitri make out later, should I include more detail? Do you want Dimitri to rearrange his priorities? And since I'm a little iffy about adding original characters, do you guys like Delia? _

* * *

Dimitri desperately wanted to talk to Rose about everything, but he didn't find time until the next afternoon. After her shower, there was a special welcoming dinner with some royal Moroi (including Queen Tatiana herself) that Rose and Lissa both had to attend. The next morning, Dimitri felt obliged to go to church, and all three of them had lunch with Janine after that. He finally got some alone time with Rose when Lissa left to go get her dress fitted.

"I'm assuming you're going to have one of those, too?" Dimitri asked, watching Lissa walk off.

"Mine's at one," Rose said, nodding. She took his hand and lead him on a roundabout way to her room. They lingered inside, keeping close to her door, Rose leaning against the door frame and playing with the doorknob. She nodded to the near-empty wastepaper basket by the mini-fridge where the manila folder sat, its contents spilling out.

"Did you look over that?" Rose asked.

"Yes."

"See anyone you like?"

"No." Did she really think he would?

"Think anyone would take that as an appropriate answer?"

"No."

Rose paused for a moment before asking, "Any questions?"

Even though he was being given the opportunity to ask the questions that were all too willing to leap out of his mouth, Dimitri couldn't do it. In that moment, Rose looked so... fragile, so ready to fall apart at the seams. Even if they hashed out all of the details now, they had almost a week where the subject could (and probably would) come up at any time, again and again and again depending on outer influences. So it would be better to wait. Right now, Rose needed a distraction.

So Dimitri leaned down and kissed her, reaching behind the girl with one hand to lock the door. Rose insisted that she took her birth control to manage her periods only and Dimitri respected that decision, so they weren't going to have sex... but privacy when you were kissing someone was always a good thing. Last time, both their shirts had come off.

Rose responded eagerly, apparently thankful Dimitri wasn't pushing the issue of her impending marriage. Not talking about important things (i.e.: how she will one day dump him to get married to someone she won't love) was definitely a sign of a bad relationship, but they wouldn't be together for very long anyway.

Some time later, Rose's cell phone rang. The sound was muffled by the heavy denim piled on top of it, but it was too loud for either of them to pretend to ignore. Rose sighed and pulled away, a shimmer of goosebumps passing over her bare arms and exposed belly. She crawled to the edge of the bed and reached to seize her jeans. Dimitri watched, wondering idly if he should bother grabbing an ankle if Rose fell over. But most of his brain power was going through the last hour, trying to figure out how he'd lost his socks. Rose had pulled hers off as soon as they'd got to the bed, but he didn't remember taking his off at all. (He also made a mental note to rearrange his priorities.)

"Hello?" Rose asked, putting the phone to her ear. She almost smiled. "Yeah, I know. Okay. Sure. Okay. See you." She closed the cell with a click and dropped it back onto her pants. "I'm currently missing my fitting," she said, turning around to face Dimitri, who pulled on an appropriately abashed expression. He'd noticed one o'clock passing and hadn't said anything about it (he had thought that there was a good chance Rose had also seen one o'clock passing and would do something about it).

"Sorry."

Rose smiled, something on his face amusing her. "You should come with me. Delia's nice, and she'd love to meet you."

"Really?"

"Yes," she said. Then the pleased look faded slightly, replaced by confusion as she looked him over. "Where are your socks?"

Laughing, Dimitri got up off the bed and went to retrieve his shirt. Rose also got dressed, and then helped him search for his socks. Once all their clothing had been accounted for, Rose set off for Lissa's room.

The room itself hadn't been transformed in any major way, but the change in its atmosphere was a little staggering, to say the least. Before, it had been just been a guest room – temporary, its extravagance purely for show and to astonish visitors. Now, it seemed... alive, lived-in. Happy. A small radio was set up on the coffee table, quietly playing a classic rock station, and in the corner was a small sewing machine that was set up on its own stand. Lissa was walking around the room and eating a pastry from the pantry. Her walk was uncertain, wobbly, and Dimitri assumed it was from the four-inch green and black heels she was wearing. At the sewing machine, a voluptuous dhampir woman was hemming what looked like a green dress made out of some sparkly material.

When Rose closed the door, the woman looked up and smiled widely. She snipped the green dress free from the machine, tossed it over the chair she'd been sitting in, and then positively flew across the room, pulling Rose into a tight hug when she arrived at the door.

"It's been forever!" she gushed. "How's your new school? I heard about the attack–"

"I'm fine," Rose said, hugging the older woman back, "Missed you too." Lissa, who had come over to stand with Dimitri, smiled at the exchange.

"Who's your friend?" Delia asked, nodding at Dimitri. Rose scowled.

"Delia, this is my boyfriend Dimitri," Rose said, waving to Dimitri. Then she turned to him and waved to Delia. "Dimitri, this is Delia. She mooches off of my mom, but is cool anyway."

"I used to baby sit Rose when she was a little kid, but now I just housesit," Delia explained, shaking Dimitri's hand. "And since Janine is gone so often, I've kind of just moved my family in to the house. It's easier that way."

"And Delia finds and tailors dresses for special people," Lissa added. Delia rolled her eyes.

With the introductions aside, it was time to get down to business. Delia clapped her hands, her demeanor changing appropriately. "Rose, go pin your hair up and put on your dress. It's in the bathroom. Lissa, keep on walking. Not shuffling this time, though – I want actual walking!"

Lissa rolled her eyes, finished her pastry, and resumed walking around the room. Dimitri settled himself on the couch.

When Rose came out of the bathroom, she was wearing a stunning red dress. It looked like it was made out of the same sparkly material as Lissa's dress, and Dimitri wondered if the only difference between the two was the color. Then he decided against it – the girls had completely different body types, and dresses weren't "one size fits all" types of clothing.

Delia waved Rose over to a painted white box and instantly started fussing once Rose stepped up onto it. "The skirt's too long – it's not supposed to touch your toes like that. The neckline's too straight – it's supposed to look like a _v-neck_, not a freakin' _scoop_," Delia sighed.

She eventually decided on what to change and how, so Rose changed back into her normal clothes and handed the dress back. Then she pulled on red and black heels similar to Lissa's and started tottering around the room.

While she was cutting and sewing, Delia was chattering away. Even though Dimitri barely knew her, what she said was still fascinating. Her husband, Andrew, had a job again (jobs for one-armed men were scarce, especially in this economy). Their oldest son (and only biological child), Vince, was still a complete drunk, but he had recently survived falling off the roof of a five-story building – _twice_ – only receiving a few bruises each time, so that was something they could be proud of. Lev, the oldest of four adopted children, had stopped lighting things on fire and had reformed some. Zack had found a human finger in a tree near his school, but was fine – his only problem was that an older girl kept carrying him around at recess, and he couldn't hit her because Andrew had taught him to never ever hit girls. Finley was doing well in kindergarten – he missed Rose, though, and was still a bit depressed about her leaving for school. And finally, Adrianna was officially potty trained.

In turn, Rose and Lissa talked about what had happened at St. Vladimir's over the year. Rose talked about normal school drama – notably excluding her stalker, but Delia didn't seem to notice how Rose censored herself. After a little hesitation, Lissa talked about her newfound spirit abilities. Delia seemed interested in those, but seemed to be more fascinated with the fact that St. Vladimir, the school's namesake, also had Lissa's capabilities.

"If you guys want to know more about him, I could always talk to Andrew. He'd know if they found out anything new about him and Anna," she said.

"Okay," Lissa agreed eagerly.

"In the meantime," Rose said, looking at Lissa slyly, "How 'bout a round of Truth?"

Dimitri had heard of that game. Karolina and her friends used to stay up late on warm summer nights, talking for hours. Sometimes the game ended in tears if a new friend joined too soon after meeting the group, but usually everything went down okay. Dimitri had been able to hear them from his bedroom, so he'd stay up late and listen as they talked about everything – from sex to religion to music to whatever nerdy TV show the girls all secretly watched.

Delia cut off Lissa's agreement, saying loudly, "Rose, that game is ruthless. Besides – your boyfriend is in the room. How do you think he'd feel if Lissa asked who you first had sex with?"

"Well, I haven't had sex with anyone, so it doesn't matter," Rose said. She kept her face mostly unconcerned, but it looked to Dimitri like she almost wanted to laugh. "And even if I _had_ slept with some random guy, I'm _obviously_ not with him anymore."

Sensing that continuing to argue with Rose would be pointless, Delia shook her head and spoke to Dimitri, saying, "Whenever you want to leave, do it. Nobody will blame you." The she turned back to her sewing machine and began to hem the bottom of Rose's dress, muttering curse words in the direction of whoever had designed the dress as she did so.

Taking that as a cue to commence, Lissa began the game.

"Rose, do you know who your dad is?" she asked.

"Not a clue," Rose replied. "Nobody let me see the family tree when they were figuring out my bloodline. All I know is that he's Turkish." She paused, and then added with a smile, "And he must have had wicked cool hair. Lissa, who taught you how to ride a bike?"

Lissa smiled wistfully at the memory. "My dad, of course," she said. Then she turned to Dimitri. "Dimitri, have you ever had a crush on a teacher?"

Dimitri felt his face heat up, ever so slightly, and wondered again if he was the type of person to actually blush. "Well, she wasn't exactly a teacher, and I didn't exactly have a crush on her... but I guess so. It could count." Suddenly, he knew what question he would be asked next. "Lissa – have you ever kissed someone younger than you?"

Lissa frowned, thinking. "Do you mean like, grade difference younger or just younger?"

"Grade difference younger."

"No, I don't think I have," Lissa said, "Anyway... about this not-crush on the not-teacher...?"

"She was a guardian and about ten years older than me. Last year I spent a month wondering what it'd be like to sleep with her. But then transfer students came, so I got distracted and got over it." Dimitri still had a soft spot for redheads, though. Mostly, it was because the hair color was so unusual, but there was always that reminder of _her_... "Um, Rose – what are you most afraid of?"

Rose chewed on her lip, trying to put her thoughts into words. Finally, she gave a list: "Being alone – like, emotionally, as in everybody hates me. Distance isn't such a big deal. Screwing up. Getting married to someone I hate because I hate all of the other prospects even more than him. Watching as someone gets killed."

"Huh," Lissa said.

Dimitri used the stunned silence to give her list proper thought. Having everyone hate you was certainly a legit fear, although Dimitri couldn't imagine it happening to Rose. Screwing up with the stakes so high – and she was practically already in high Moroi society, where the stakes were always elevated – was also a perfectly valid fear. But if Rose played her cards right – by being nice and not making huge waves or doing anything scandalous – then the chance of that was small.

The other two, though... those might happen. Dimitri didn't know any of the potential matches for her, didn't know anything about any of their personalities, but there had to be at least one decent person, right? As for the last one – Strigoi attacks happened, especially to Moroi royals. And the smaller your family was, the more likely you'd be attacked (although Dimitri didn't know if that was simply because there were less possible targets or because Strigoi became more determined to finish off your bloodline the smaller it became). Sometimes guardians died, even the best ones who had spent over half their lives destroying the fiends and protecting charges.

"Lissa," Rose finally said, "Do you believe in God?"

The girl's answer was automatic. "Yes," she said. "Dimitri – do you?"

Dimitri chose his words carefully before answering. There was no clear-cut answer to him. "To an extent, I guess. I'm not sure if I totally believe, but I think that He's there for those who _do_ believe. I guess that goes for any other deity as well."

"Do you think He micromanages?" Rose asked no one in particular. "Because we're stupid and there are, like, four billion of us. And it's hard enough to look after eight people on the Sims, especially if they all have jobs and things to do. Wouldn't it be hard to _not_ lose track of people?"

"Sims are too stupid to live," Lissa pointed out, "At least on the Sims 2. Seriously – someone in one of my households keeps on burning food and starting fires every single time they cook, and everyone there has at _least_ four cooking points!"

Delia caught Dimitri's eye and made a "they're crazy" gesture as Rose agreed and the girls started to compare ways to screw up Sims' lives and lamenting the fact that the game was so family friendly that neither teens nor young adults could get pregnant and that children began to hate their parents if one of them slept around (among other things).


	8. Chapter 8

_I spent a while changing it from ending at midnight to noon and back again because the nocturnal thing is such a bitch, but hopefully everything lines up. I should probably go get a beta for these kinds of things, but they happen so rarely... I don't know. _

_Also, the guardian who gives the intro speech is heavily based on Mal Reynolds, so it took a lot of self-control not to write "the Earth got used up" and the rest of his introductory speech after I started with "Okay, here's how it is..." You should be thanking me. _

_Pft. And the dress descriptions are horrible. I know. _

* * *

Dimitri was pleasantly surprised to find a black and white guardian's uniform sitting on his bed when he came back from lunch. There was also a little card that listed when to be in the ballroom (and directions on how to get there, including what entrance to take) and also instructing him to eat before he came. Dimitri knew that the clothing consisted of hand-me-downs, but it looked like it would fit him relatively well.

Even though Dimitri knew that he'd just be standing against the wall the entire time, he still wanted to go. It didn't make much sense, though – if she was near him, Dimitri would have to watch his girlfriend being flirted with and meet her future husband. The thought made Dimitri's insides burn. And even though he had no romantic inclinations whatsoever towards the girl, watching Lissa meet her own suitors wouldn't be any easier. Maybe it was the fact that Dimitri knew she didn't want to meet them, that she was perfectly happy and in love with her boyfriend – who, it might be added, was a royal Moroi like herself _and_ had enough Dragomir blood to ensure their children could inherit the Dragomir name.

Dimitri didn't know why Christian's social position irked him so much, but it did. Maybe he wanted Lissa and Christian to work out so badly because he knew his own love story had been doomed from day one. As a male dhampir, he really didn't have any options – if he fell for another dhampir, they'd have to be put on separate assignments, and who knew how often their Moroi would cross paths? But if he fell for a Moroi... well, maybe it might work out if Rose was a lowly, forgotten non-royal – or even an Ivashkov, whose family members probably numbered in the high thousands.

Dimitri spent the rest of the day rereading old books. Then, a half-hour or so before he had to be in the ballroom, he ate a quick dinner and got dressed.

He was one of the first ones to arrive at the meeting place – a small side room where, in a corner, some caterers were arranging hors d'oeuvres and flutes of champagne on platters. Soon enough, though, other dhampirs began appearing – novices, Dimitri noticed. He wondered why they were here. Was it because they were all going to be assigned to high-ranking Moroi and the guardians thought they could use some practice? The idea didn't make much sense, but it was the only thing Dimitri could currently come up with.

After a few minutes of waiting, an older, grizzled guardian came into the room. He had a quick conversation with a server, who then left the room. Dimitri guessed that it was almost time for the Moroi to arrive.

"Okay," the guardian said, bringing the novices to attention. "I don't know why any of you are here, just that the powers-that-be want you to be. So don't go askin' me any questions. Understand?" He looked around, and Dimitri felt himself nodding along with the other novices.

"So, here's how it is: You guys will all be in the ballroom, that way you get a break while the royals are eating..." He went on to explain what signals to use if, for some reason, you needed to leave the room. The guardian also gave a refresher course on formal guardian position – stand up straight, watch everything, don't talk, and remember what you might hear but never repeat anything.

"Sometimes it's hard," he said, "especially if it's about someone you know, like a friend, but trust me – you're going to be guardians someday, and it's a necessary skill."

And with that, the novices were cut loose.

Dimitri was just sliding on his guardian mask as the first royals entered, and a few servers were also scurrying into place. The ballroom was large, and it took an obvious effort for some to look uniformly scattered around the space instead of clumping together. Dimitri couldn't really blame any of them – they were all humans, and even to him, the Moroi looked intimidating.

Lissa and Rose both arrived fashionably late. Lissa was in a glittery gown, the shade of green matching her eyes. Gold thread created a decoration of flowers that started at her right shoulder and made its way down her side, curling around her hip and trailing off as it went down the short train on the back of her dress. Rose was in a red dress that looked to be made out of the same kind of fabric, but that – and the decorations made out of gold thread – was where the similarities stopped. The top part was probably corset-inspired, and the skirt was decorated with the same gold flowers as Lissa's. Dimitri knew he didn't have the right terminology to really describe either of their dresses, not even in Russian. Maybe if Karolina or his mother got married and turned into a Bridezilla...

Both of the girls wore identical unruffled expressions as they paused to observe the ballroom. Lissa was immediately drawn into conversation by an unusually short Moroi, and Dimitri recognized Sander Badica from his picture. Rose nodded her friend farewell and went back to examining the watercolor murals that decorated the ballroom's walls as Lissa and her suitor walked away. Her eyes stopped just to the left of Dimitri's shoulder, and he purposely directed his gaze at Nathan Ivaskov, who was talking to Priscilla Voda, his wife on his arm. Ivan Zeklos, of all people, seemed to be listening in, but he didn't look at Dimitri.

When Dimitri looked back again, Rose was talking with Nathan's son, Adrian, and they were just within earshot.

"...must have a boyfriend," Adrian was saying, smiling and turning on the charm.

Rose shrugged, feigning a demeanor of cool detachment. "We're not as serious as Lissa and Christian are, but it's not like I'm going to get up and leave _now_ just because I'm supposed to marry someone else in five years." Her words were littered with little icy barbs, and there was just a hint of a sadistic smile on her lips as she watched Adrian falter.

Dimitri also felt a little spike of vindictive pleasure. Adrian had been one of the first American Moroi had heard of ("I don't think he swings that way, but stay away from him anyway," Lissa had said) – he was a smoker, a drinker, and a shameless flirt. Everything Rose hated, and not even good fling material, much less boyfriend or husband material. Then again, Dimitri might be biased due to his upbringing and so many hours of listening to his mother lecture his younger sisters on what kind of person to date and/or eventually have kids with. Here, in high Moroi society, people very rarely got married because they loved each other.

Finally, Adrian recovered, although he didn't seem to have his previous poised charisma. "Well, if things go south," he said, "You can always call me." He sketched Rose a bow and disappeared into the crowd, no doubt looking for someone who would give him alcohol. Rose rolled her eyes and waved Lissa over.

"My God, what did you say to Adrian?" Lissa asked, keeping her voice low. In it was a mixture of pride and elation.

"I told him that I was already dating someone and that I wasn't going to just _leave_ him," Rose said, rolling her eyes. "I saw Sander over by the entrance, and he had this desperate 'I need to get wasted' look on his face – how did _that_ happen?"

"I think he was just standing near his aunt, actually..." Simultaneously, both girls looked around the room. Lissa opened her mouth to continue, but was interrupted by someone announcing Her Royal Highness, Queen Tatiana.

Dimitri had never seen the queen, and was a little surprised at her appearance – she was older, maybe in her sixties, but the only thing that gave it away was her silvery hair. When she came into the room, everyone gave slight head bows. She was dressed in a ball gown made out of some kind of midnight blue material, and the silver tiara on top of her head matched the silver highlights on her dress. Four guardians in pinstripes had entered the room with her. Two stayed by the entrance, and the other two loosely circled the woman.

Soon after Tatiana came in, everyone was called into an adjacent dining room for dinner. Dimitri saw Adrian whispering with his great-aunt as they left, and wondered what it was about – was he telling her that Rose was attached to someone? Had it been so obvious from her words that she was dating someone she shouldn't? It was impossible for him to replay the words without bias – Dimitri knew they were doomed, knew there would be repercussions if they stayed together after they finished school.

Once the last Moroi left the room, Dimitri relaxed and slumped against the wall, eventually sliding all the way down to the floor. Friends walked toward each other and formed small groups, chatting and laughing at various things. One guardian simply let out a stream of curses and disappeared through a side door servers used.

"Was someone hitting on Megan again?" one woman called after him. He was already gone, though, so she unbuttoned her jacket and stretched her arms above her head. "Those assholes should probably know not to hit on Andrew's relatives by now, shouldn't they?" she asked the room at large.

"I know!" a man said from across the room. "And she's, like, fifteen anyway, so why the hell would you hit on her in the first place? She's like a little twig."

"Just because you like fat chicks, Jerome, doesn't mean we all do!"

Now, servers started to come out with uneaten appetizers. The guardians were free to eat whatever they wanted – except the meatballs, which had to be distributed evenly to prevent fights from breaking out. Megan gave extras to all of the novices, though, something that permanently put her in Dimitri's good graces. "Delicious" was an understatement.

All too soon, the servers disappeared back through side doors, reappearing moments later with small deserts and, of course, appropriate after-dinner alcoholic beverages. Dimitri sighed, stretched one last time, and walked back to his spot against the wall.

Rose and Lissa seemed to have met the rest of their suitors during dinner, because while Dimitri saw them walking around, he noticed that most of them didn't initiate any kind of contact with the girls. Lissa alternated between Yannick Lazar, Lev Zeklos, and Evans Voda. Dimitri vaguely recalled a scandal he heard at the beginning of the year where Yannick proposed to a human girl, and he also noticed that Lev and Evans exchanged flirty glances or words whenever they passed each other. Lissa seemed to notice this as well, and a smug smile replaced her sweet one whenever she saw it. Adrian ended up talking with Rose, though, which made Dimitri's insides start to burn. The fact that she resisted his advances did little to improve Dimitri's mood.

Finally, the clock chimed noon. At first, only a few Moroi left at a time, but then suddenly the ballroom was empty and the guardian who had talked to the novices was walking around the room dismissing everyone.

Rose was waiting for him outside, smiling slightly despite the freezing temperature and her lack of jacket. Dimitri immediately shed his and covered her shoulders with it. She kissed his cheek.

"I'm sorry you had to be there," Rose said, beginning to walk to their wing of guest housing. The sun was high in the sky, but it was weak and seemed to have very little effect on her. "But were you watching Lissa?"

Dimitri laughed. "Yeah, I saw what she was doing. It's brilliant, but do you think it will fool anyone?"

"No, not if they look closely," Rose said. "But still... It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, one of us having a chance."

They walked past a frozen fountain, Dimitri trying to repress on certain thoughts. They would not have a happy ending. They had, at best, four and a half years together – and that was pushing it. And no, he would not get laid tonight.

"I like your dress," he remarked. "Delia did a good job." Dimitri hadn't seen the final project before that night, and he suspected that neither of the girls had either, not until it was time to put them on.

Rose snorted, pulling at her top. From the pained and slightly pissed off look on her face, Dimitri assumed that the stays from her strapless bra were cutting into her skin, despite promises that the exact situation wouldn't happen. "I know, right? I'm so sexy in, like, a million petticoats. And I'm going to be so sexy when I take this fucking bra off, because I'll have red marks all over my sides."

"You're always sexy," Dimitri said automatically. It only a lie if you were a stickler for wording.

Rose opened her mouth, maybe to laugh or reply with a witty retort, but was interrupted by a funny buzzing noise. Blushing, she reached into the front of her dress. "I need to stop putting things in here, but I had no pockets tonight," she said, both as an explanation and a reprimand, wincing as she pulled out her cell phone. She flipped it open and pulled up the text message. Dimitri read over her shoulder – it was from Lissa.

_Ivan's having some issues – might want to bring some comfort food. _

_Meet us in room 294. _

_Bring Dimitri, please?_

There was no hesitation. Lissa said she needed their help, so they picked up the place. They stopped at Rose's room, where Dimitri helped her out of the dress (her bra _had_ left marks, and not only on her sides – her back was probably the worst, and Dimitri wondered why she hadn't left early to change) and then grabbed two packages of Oreos and one of Kleenex while Rose pulled on the closest clothes available – her pajamas. Then the couple silently crossed over to the wing where Ivan's room was, being careful not to make too much noise. It was the middle of the night, and everyone else was in bed.

Ivan was still mostly dressed, as was Lissa. He looked very upset, but she just seemed tired. They were both sitting on his bed, so Rose and Dimitri joined them.

"What's up?" Rose asked.

"I think I'm in love," Ivan said, "but –" He swallowed, unable to continue.

"He and Lev Zeklos are first cousins," Lissa finished, taking the package of Oreos and opening it. Ivan immediately took two out.

"Ah," Roes said. She bit her lip, although Dimitri didn't know what she was holding back.

Tentatively, not wanting to cause more distress, Dimitri added, "And I saw him and Evans Voda flirting." He sighed. Ivan really had no luck with love.

After a moment of thought, Lissa turned to Rose. "What is it?" she asked. "We're all friends here. Well, kind of." Ivan missed the girl's glance, though – he was too busy using his Oreos to build a face.

"Well," Rose said, her cheeks going pink with embarrassment, "It's not like they can have kids, which is usually the argument against incest. So why not go for it?"

Neither Lissa nor Dimitri could help but laugh.

"That – that actually sounds like a good argument," Lissa gasped out between giggles.

* * *

_And... that's pretty much all I have now. I'm suffering from huge amounts of writer's block right now, so you probably won't see a new chapter for a few weeks. Sorry guys._


	9. Chapter 9

_So, I'm alive. It's been so long that I don't remember many of my plans for the story anymore, so updates are going to be sporadic as Real Life gets in the way (read: I have both an AP test and a SAT test to take sometime in the next few months), and I get back into the writing groove. But hopefully new chapters won't take seven months (!) again. Don't worry though – I _do_ know what the ending will be. Who Rose's stalker is, who she'll end up with, etc. All of the important bits. _

_And oh joy! A point of view change!_

* * *

It was ridiculously early – 6 p.m., the digital clock on the bedside table read – when Rose woke up, but after she opened her eyes, Rose knew she was awake for good. Quietly, she slid out of bed, trying to be careful as she untangled herself from Dimitri to avoid waking him. She was successful; he didn't even twitch as she smoothed the covers back.

Rose thought about taking a shower, brushing out her hair (which was still in its curls, thanks to the ridiculous amount of hairspray Delia had sprayed all over her), maybe shaving her legs as well. Or she could make tea and start to sketch out the base for her next game. Her hands itched with anticipation at the latter, but Rose suddenly had an overwhelming desire to leave her room. It seemed too small, too staged, too hot and stuffy.

Hurriedly, not knowing what was causing the feeling, Rose dressed in the dark and headed outside – but not before grabbing her sketch book and her pencil case.

Once she left guest housing, she turned left, away from the center of Court. She walked around for a while, until she ended up in one of the many courtyards. This one had a frozen, snow-covered fountain in the center, with a statue of Vasilisa, a famous heroine from Russian folklore, on a small platform in the middle. Rose wasn't sure why she was a statue at the Moroi Court, but maybe they'd run out of famous Queens and wanted an even ratio of males and females.

Rose slowly sucked in air as a cramp flared in her abdomen, but then reached out and brushed off the snow on the wide edge of the fountain and sat down. She hadn't drawn in what felt like ages – the past three days had been so busy – and cramps weren't going to stop her. Although maybe she shouldn't sit outside for too long.

Yawning, Rose opened her sketchbook to a clean page and started sketching out a body for the steampunk dress-up. While the form looked good, it didn't look _right_. After numerous tries, she abandoned that and moved on to another clean page and started sketching with no real plan in mind. It turned out that the scene was of cross man, looking disturbingly like Adrian's father. He was in the middle of chiding his ten-year-old child while the wife (who thankfully resembled no one Rose had actually met) looked on, and the whole thing was apparently set in the corner of a busy ballroom. Rose was putting a little bit more detail into some of the dancer's outfits when a shadow crossed her paper.

Startled, she looked up and saw Adrian, standing in the yellow glow of a streetlamp.

"Oh!" she said, blinking. Then she smiled shyly. "Hi."

"Hi," Adrian said, returning her smile, his much less shy. "How long have you been out here?"

"Um…" Rose touched her pocket, realizing that she hadn't brought her cell phone. Pain shot through her hands as she moved them – she wasn't wearing gloves, and her fingers were numb and freezing… as were her toes. And her rear, of course, which she'd parked on a cold slab of stone. How had she not noticed it before? Shouldn't she have noticed if her fingers became clumsy with cold? "What time is it?"

"Around eight," Adrian replied.

"I've been here way too long, then," Rose said. She closed her sketchbook and put her pencils and eraser back in their case. Standing up, she winced. Everything hurt. Why had she gone outside in the first place? "Let's go somewhere warm."

"Hungry?" Adrian asked, easily taking her hand.

"Yeah, actually, I am," Rose said. She paused, but then asked anyway. "What are you doing up so early?"

"Couldn't sleep. You?"

"Couldn't sleep either."

The pair made their way to one of the many small cafés littering the main walkways of Court. Once inside, Adrian went up front and ordered; coffee for him, tea for her, and a large pastry to spit. Rose sat down at a corner table and started touching anything she could that was warm. When her hands were sufficiently mobile and pain-free, she pulled out her sketchbook and pencil case and flipped to an old page where she had been practicing trees. She didn't know what to say to Adrian after last night. Looking back, she had been a real bitch to him.

Adrian either didn't care (or didn't remember), and he seemed perfectly nice when he returned with their food.

"What are you working on?" Adrian asked, taking a sip of coffee.

"Trees," Rose said. "My trees are almost as bad as my people." Rose pulled her tea closer, but didn't drink it yet. She'd wait until his back was turned before adding the ridiculous amount of sugar needed to make the bitter tea sweet.

"Maybe you should just try sketching everything out loosely, instead of trying to make it perfect the first time around," Adrian said unexpectedly.

Rose looked up, raising her eyebrows. "You draw, too?"

"Well, I got into art school, didn't I?" Adrian drank more coffee.

Huh. You learned something new every day.

"You're not one of those holier-than-thou assholes, are you?" Rose asked, pulling her sketchbook closer, as if art-school pretentiousness was contagious.

"No. I just thought art school would be easier than anything else."

Rose shook her head, but scooted her sketchbook back to its original position in the middle of the table. Adrian watched her draw in silence, but when he noticed that her tea was getting cold, he took her pencil and started working on the trunk, outlining gnarled roots and putting knots in the once-smooth bark while Rose drank her tea.

The feelings of peace and contentment didn't last very long, though. Rose was about halfway done with her tea when Lissa showed up – followed by Dimitri. Rose wasn't quite sure why she felt so guilty when she saw Dimitri. She was allowed to hang out with other guys; Dimitri could hang out with other girls without Rose getting jealous, and if he wasn't so shy and could make friends easier, he probably would. So why did she feel so bad? Was it solely because she was expected to get married to Adrian someday, or was there something else?

Rose pushed the feelings away when the pair sat down. It looked like they had bad news – Lissa wore a pinched and pitying expression, and Dimitri had his guardian mask on. Rose noticed that he must have received the bad news while he was getting ready; Dimitri had changed into fresh clothes, but he hadn't shaved yet.

"What's wrong?" Adrian asked. Based on the level of panic in his voice, he was apparently more attuned to their feelings than Rose was.

"You know your mom's old school?" Lissa asked, looking at Rose.

Her stomach sunk. Rose already knew what happened.

"The Not-Hogwarts? What happened there?"

"It was attacked."

Rose wasn't quite sure why the world seemed to slow down or why she felt so crushed. She had never been there before, hadn't visited it when Janine went to catch up with old teachers or whatever she had done there four years ago, and while it had been a good school for Janine, there were no one remaining that the woman was attached to. Maybe Rose was taking it so hard because she had been through the same thing with her own school.

"Oh," Rose finally said. "Where's Mom now?"

"I think she's trying to find you," Dimitri said.

"Let's go back to my room," Rose said. She opened her mouth to speak again, but paused, realizing how stupid that idea sounded. If Janine couldn't find her, would she really wait around Rose's room until the girl came back? "Even if she isn't there, I think I need to put on another sweater," Rose added.

"I'll go with you," Dimitri volunteered. Then he turned to Lissa and Adrian and asked, "Can you guys see if Janine's in her room? And then I think we should just start asking around."

"I think the front desk usually has someone there," Lissa said. She stood up, and then wrapped the pastry up and handed it to Rose for something to do while Adrian pulled on his coat and fixed his hair. When Rose had her pencil case, she and Dimitri left.

"Why was Adrian talking to you?" Dimitri asked once they were fairly far away from the café. His voice wasn't accusing at all; mostly, he sounded confused. "Weren't you, uh, kind of _mean_ to him last night?"

Rose yawned. "It is kind of weird," she said, thinking back on her behavior last night. "Mean" was an understatement. "Bitch" was a closer fit. "Maybe…"

"Maybe what?"

"I don't know."

The couple didn't stay long when they got to Rose's room. Rose dropped off her pencil case and pulled on a sweater; Dimitri retrieved his shoes which, like his uniform, had probably been borrowed, and dropped them off at his room. They were just about to head downstairs to the lobby when Rose received a text from Lissa – Janine was in her room, and was Rose going to go over there or should they meet Janine somewhere else?

After replying – a quick yes, she'd go over to Janine's room, obviously – Rose turned around and headed to the opposite way. Janine's room was in the same wing as Ivan's. In fact, her room was directly below his.

Adrian and Lissa were inside when Rose and Dimitri arrived. They quietly slipped outside to give Janine and Rose some privacy, and Dimitri followed them.

Rose was a little shocked at how tired her mother was. Of course, she didn't expect her mom to be up and running or anything, but it was so strange seeing the woman looking so drained.

"Hi," Rose said. She took two steps forward and wrapped her arms around Janine. "You want me to make coffee or something?"

"Do you even know how to make coffee?" Janine asked.

"No, but you don't drink tea like I do."

"Here, the coffee machine is really easily to use. I can tell you what to do."

Rose and Janine ended up both sitting on the couch, drinking coffee. Janine told Rose about how she'd got the call at five because one of her guardian's relatives had been involved. Graham's little sister was okay, but a cousin wasn't so lucky. Janine had given Graham a week's worth of leave and a round-trip plane ticket to Glasgow. He'd left that morning.

"I kind of want to go home myself," Rose said. She wondered what her room looked like now. Did she still have that Beatles poster up? Had she lost the angel snow globe, or was it still on the shelf by her bed?

"School doesn't start until the fourth," Janine said, "You could spend a week at home before going back to St. Vladimir's."

"That sounds nice," Rose said. She wasn't sure if she wanted to just go home alone or not, though. Even if she brought Dimitri or Lissa with her, she might just end up avoiding them the whole time, which would make her feel terrible. Here at Court, she felt like she could ignore anyone without too much guilt because there were other people here and things you could do. If she went home and ignored a guest, that would make her a terrible host.

"Are you thinking about bringing anyone?" Janine asked.

"I don't know. I just kind of want to be alone."

"Think about it, then."

_

* * *

It's about 500 words shorter than average, but I seriously don't give a fuck anymore._


End file.
